The family newspaper versions of what the acronyms FUBAR and SNAFU stand for are Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition/Repair, and Situation Normal, All Fouled Up.
And that’s what almost any transition of power related to University of Hawaii sports seems to have been, for a long time. Nothing can be smooth and without controversy.
Forget about who you think is right or wrong in the latest unintended dramedy. UH president David Lassner’s firing of athletic director Craig Angelos — a guy he hired 18 months ago — is just the latest in a long series of clown shows that take the stage when changes are made at AD or a high-level coaching position at Manoa.
My earliest memories of UH sports have nothing to do with anything anyone did on a field or court. They’re about an awards banquet, in 1973. I wasn’t there, but my work uncles at the Star-Bulletin sports department — Randy Cadiente, Paul Carvalho, Dick Couch, Jim Easterwood, Bill Kwon and others — told me all about it.
Of course, Red Rocha isn’t Angelos, and Harlan Cleveland isn’t Lassner. But for at least the past 51 years, UH has turned the hiring and firing of high-profile figures in the athletic department into a sideshow that infuriates its fanbase and other stakeholders. And, if you pay taxes in this state, you’re a stakeholder. It seems that every time something like this is botched, it ends up costing us, one way or another.
Carvalho, who would later cover Rainbow sports and serve as sports editor of the Star-Bulletin, was a UH student in 1973 who had just started as a clerk at the paper.
He is retired now, but still follows the goings-on at Manoa.
“It seems they never learn,” said Carvalho, who added that the firing of football coach Dave Holmes, also in the mid-’70s, was very strange, too. “Incompetence, I don’t know what you call it. They consistently make the very worst moves at the very worst times. I’m not saying Lassner didn’t have the right to make the move he did, but it’s the worst thing at the worst time. It sounds like it’s pettiness, because (Angelos) stole his thunder by announcing the Mountain West move.”
Paul is one of the most fair-minded people I know, and he admits he doesn’t know all of the story from every perspective. But, I agree with him that the optics are bad — just like they were in 1973, when it was announced at the postseason banquet that Rocha would no longer be the basketball coach.
The ‘Bows had gone 15-11 that season. But winning more games than you lose wasn’t good enough; Rocha was the victim of his own success — this was just one year after the legendary Fabulous Five — coached by Rocha — had completed its two-year run of electrifying Hawaii basketball fans.
There have been so many other botched transitions since 1973 that drew public ire, some when trolls were just guys who lived under bridges and didn’t have Wi-Fi — so you can’t just blame the internet.
A few of the other lowlights: Basketball coach Riley Wallace was threatened with a “two-for-one” when he tried to stand up for football coach Bob Wagner at the announcement of his firing; football coach Greg McMackin was allowed to “retire” and “donate” half of his million-dollar buyout and pretend he wasn’t being fired; and — my personal unfavorite — a poorly written contract allowed fired basketball coach Gib Arnold to get paid for getting the program in trouble with the NCAA.
Which reminds me: Three years after Rocha was let go, the ‘Bows were on NCAA probation.
In this realm, bad personnel decisions and poor execution of them tend to lead to bad consequences.
The firings of Rocha and Angelos are both very strange. An article by Gene Hunter in the Honolulu Advertiser a week after Rocha was reassigned makes you think about some similarities and differences.
Rocha was described as a pawn in a power struggle between Cleveland and the Board of Regents, Hunter wrote.
When Angelos was hired in May 2023, you might recall, the Regents voiced their displeasure with Lassner’s providing them with just one candidate, Angelos, to consider. They ripped a faulty process, and three of the 11 did not say “yes” in the final approval vote.
The state legislature has been quiet this time around, but some of the lawmakers in ‘73 had plenty to say about what happened to Rocha.
State Rep. Jack Suwa said it was “very shady” in Hunter’s article.
Some of the regents threatened to fire Cleveland. One of them, Charles S. Ota, said the university was “a monster with no head.”
No one’s going to fire Lassner. He’s set to retire at the end of next month.
”Maybe the new president should hire Angelos and give him a one-year contract,” Carvalho said.
