Craig Angelos is still the athletic director at the University of Hawaii for another few days. If you didn’t know he’d been fired less than two weeks ago, you couldn’t tell from his smiling demeanor at the UH basketball team’s game against North Carolina on Friday.
You might have wondered why some people in the big crowd that saw the Tar Heels beat the Rainbows 87-69 were wearing T-shirts with the words “SAVE CRAIG” printed on them.
But what’s done is done, as was confirmed by UH’s Board of Regents on Thursday. The same body that approved university president David Lassner’s choice for athletic director 18 months ago verified his departure, after hearing out some Angelos supporters.
Many questions remain about why Angelos was fired, with the only official answer that wouldn’t violate confidentiality being that Lassner said it was based on performance.
That leads us to wonder if the next UH athletic director will be expected to work without a contract and, like Angelos, as an at-will employee — meaning that they can be fired at will of the employer, without specific cause.
A good thing about that for UH (and, in effect, state taxpayers) is it doesn’t end up paying someone for not working for years if things don’t work out, and we’ve seen that before.
A bad thing is the very legitimate concern of what quality of applicants you can expect under such terms.
Was at least part of the reason for Lassner’s move because he is retiring at the end of next month? Is that why Angelos did not have a multi-year contract?
About an hour before the North Carolina game, Angelos stood near the security/media/VIP entrance. One of the people he greeted scored a game-high 26 points for UH at North Carolina almost exactly 30 years ago. After the local legend from Molokai finished his basketball career he became a sports agent.
“You should be the next athletic director here,” Angelos said to Jarinn Akana.
Maybe he should, maybe he shouldn’t.
Akana has made it very clear he is interested.
But the choice will be that of incoming UH president Wendy Hensel and the Board of Regents — at least on the surface. The way politics work in Hawaii, who really knows?
Keith Amemiya was at Friday’s game, too. Gov. Josh Green’s sports task force chief was noncommittal about whether he would apply for the job in a text message response Saturday. And noncommittal is smart until you get a feel for what kind of job security, if any, UH will offer its next athletic director.
“If there’s a limit on the number of times a person can be considered and passed over for the position, I might’ve already exceeded it,” wrote Amemiya, who applied for the past two openings. Or is it three?
“But seriously, I’m grateful for my current opportunities at Central Pacific Bank (where he is a senior vice president) and with the Governor, so let’s see how the process evolves. This is an exciting and critical time in college athletics and we all need to support a program that means so much to our state.”
The list of people who have said they won’t apply for the job is longer than the maybes at this point.
Associate AD Lois Manin, who was a finalist when Angelos got the position last year, will be the acting athletic director starting Dec. 2. But she was adamant that she will not apply for it again in a statement Wednesday.
I checked with some of the other local possibilities.
Former UH associate athletic director John McNamara said in a phone conversation Saturday he will not apply for the job. McNamara, who was a finalist for AD in 2015, said he is happy as senior vice president for marketing and communications at Hawaii Pacific Health, a post he has held since November 2021.
Sam Moku was athletic director at Hawaii Pacific University and chief of staff for Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi. The former UH football defensive back applied last year but said “probably not this time” when we conversed Saturday.
And, because many of you will always ask, I checked with June Jones.
He texted “yes.”
But, before you get excited or worried, this was the question: “Is it safe to say you would not be interested in being the AD at UH?”
