The University of Hawaii presented it as a "retirement" when it pushed football coach Greg McMackin out the door after a 6-7 season last December. UH didn’t give him a gold watch, but he could buy himself a nice timepiece with the $600,000 buyout he receives for going 0-0 in 2012.

McMackin was entitled (by contract) to $1.1 million. According to the then-66-year-old coach in his goodbye address, he "decided" to retire. And, because he loved his players so much, "In their honor I am foregoing a half a million dollars in the final year of my contract," he said.

Many just accepted it as business as usual by UH. But that part about doing it for the student-athletes was especially distasteful when we knew it wasn’t true.

McMackin was strong-armed, as was then athletic director Jim Donovan — by the Board of Regents and UH system administration.

If you didn’t know it then, you learned it from Donovan’s testimony at the state Senate hearings Monday.

Yes, McMackin "decided." He decided he didn’t want to be the subject of an investigation and take a chance on losing the entire $1.1 million. It’s not important what dirt UH had or thought it had except that it was enough to make McMackin choose to leave $500,000 without a fight.

We’d print what he has to say about all this now, except that McMackin did not return phone messages left by three Star-Advertiser sports writers Tuesday.

If you want to continue to believe he did it to honor his players, go right ahead. And you may now return to your game of "Candy Land."

Some say this was unethical and violates the chain of command at best and is felonious at worst.

Even if it was time for McMackin to go, they say, this wasn’t the way to do it.

"It’s not the result that matters, it’s the process," a friend with legal training tells me.

Everyone’s a victim at UH. President M.R.C. Greenwood and the Board of Regents say to remember the school was scammed in the concert chaos, not doing the scamming. Donovan has a $200,000 a year job he didn’t want. The football coach was Mackmailed and left with only $600,000.

Are you as misty-eyed as I am right now?

Call me insensitive, but I’ll save my pity for the lecturers who can’t make copies because their departments are out of paper and money to buy it. The TAs and secretaries who are laid off. The students whose tuition keeps going up.

Now, $90,000 for a search firm to scour the planet for a new athletic director. Sen. Donna Kim will surely add that to her long list of how much this episode is costing — especially if the new permanent AD turns out to be the guy sitting in the office now, Rockne Freitas. Freitas hasn’t officially applied, but there’s a growing sense he ends up with the job one way or another.

Good luck finding someone better qualified. The last time UH went head-hunting for the position it got Herman Frazier — his tenure widely considered a disaster of Olympic proportions.

And you’d have to question the sanity of any outsider willing to jump into this hornet’s nest of micromanagement and hack politics. Not that it’s different at colleges with "big-time" programs — except that some of them win national championships and turn a profit.

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Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783.