Week In Review

Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend. There's been a lot of UH football-related news in the past week. Here's a summary of it from Tuesday May 20 to Monday May 26, in no particular order. Let me know if there's anything I missed.


Recruiting

Dave Reardon wrote that UH has scholarship offers out to Billy Ray Stutzmann, Chad Lopati, Manti Teʻo and Stan Hasiak.

Sportsbow reported that safety/cornerback Asi Hosea of Salt Lake City, Utah was offered a scholarship. Hosea had previously lived in Hawaii, attending Kahuku and Kapolei before moving to Utah.


Warriors in the Pros

On MVN.com, a Redskins fan named Greg Trippiedi analyzed reasons why scouts may not have liked Colt Brennan, and offered some responses.

In his first AFL game, Nate Ilaoa rushed 6 times for 25 yards and scored a touchdown for the Columbus Destroyers. Unfortunately, he left the game after disclocating his shoulder. Let's hope it's not too serious.

Chad Owens caught 11 passes for 128 yards, including a 40-yard TD grab for the Colorado Crush. He also returned 8 kicks for 158 yards.

In the UIF League, Chad Kapanui passed for 212 yards and 7 TDs in leading the Sioux City Bandits to a 79-60 victory over the Colorado Ice.

Former UH and current Atlanta Falcon guard Kynan Forney had his number retired by his prep alma mater, Nagodoches High School. He also has an editing room at the school named after him.

Vince Manuwai has moved from left guard to right guard for the Jacksonville Jaguars.

CJ Hawthorne's tryout for the Buffalo Bills apparently went well. As of Thursday, he had been asked to stay longer in Buffalo to take a physical.

Ryan Grice-Mullen was sidelined by a hamstring injury, but Stephen Tsai writes that RGM has impressed Houston Texans coaches.

Word is that Grice-Mullins, at the worst, is all but assured a berth on the practice squad. If he continues to impress, he makes the active roster on opening day.

Though not playing football, former UH kicker Eric Hannum is still a pro. Cindy Luis profiles him and his medical imaging business.


TV Deal

The UH Athletics Department agreed to a new TV deal with KHNL/KFVE and Oceanic Time Warner Cable.

The agreement will pay UH a minimum of $14.52 million over six years, pending certain financial benchmarks being met by the end of the third year.

As a benefit to UH fans, football season-ticket holders will receive a 50 percent discount on a special road pay-per-view package. For the 2008 season, fans must purchase their football season tickets by July 18 to qualify for the discount, which will be worth more than $75 if three games are on the road pay-per-view package.

Ferd Lewis wrote about the big investment KFVE and Oceanic made.

At a time when we're told local TV advertising is off 10 percent or more, Oceanic and KFVE/KHNL's 30-percent raise in annual rights fees is not only a heavy bet on UH sports, but a considerable investment in it.

New athletic director Jim Donovan and associate athletic director John McNamara were able to enlist them in the vision of "growing the product" at a time when it has become a necessity for UH. It is a vision Donovan has been preaching to anyone who will listen — and, now, some influential folks have.

Brian McInnis had some details of the deal.

KFVE, the 25-year rights-holder for UH sports, remains as the primary broadcaster with about 85 percent of televised events in the next academic year.

Oceanic will again shoulder Pay-Per-View revolving around a UH football package, but now takes on more than half of the payment in the contract with the option of new mediums (Webcasting, podcasting) in the future.

Does this mean Hawaiian Telcom will continue their webcasts this year?


Other Revenue/Deficit News

Jason Kaneshiro talked to Jim Donovan, who says that the UH athletic department faces a $1.7 million deficit for 2009.

Ferd Lewis wrote about the athletic department asking the board of regents to approve the lowering of some ticket prices.

UH athletic director Jim Donovan declined comment pending regents' action but had previously said he wanted to lower prices, where possible, to boost sales and come up with so-called "family packs" to entice more families to events.

With an accumulated net deficit of $4.4 million, Donovan has said UH's biggest potential area for fiscal growth is "in our empty seats at events."

Lewis also wrote that the Clarence T.C. Ching Foundation has offered $5 million to help underwrite a $10 million expansion and renovation of Cooke Field. The offer also needs to be approved by the board of regents. There may also be a press conference about it next week.


The List

The big news of the week was about the list of the people in the UH Sugar Bowl traveling party finally being released after repeated requests from the media.

On Wednesday, Ferd Lewis wrote about how some UH employees and others were given the option to pay for their trip so that their name wouldn't appear on the list when it was eventually released.

Then, the state's Office of Information Practices asked UH why it had so far refused to release a list of names.

On Friday, the Advertiser filed a lawsuit against UH to obtain Sugar Bowl travel records. Soon after, the list was delivered to the Advertiser, with 45 of 550 names blacked out. That article has a lot more of the nitty gritty details.

The Star-Bulletin's Paul Arnett wondered what the big deal was.

Ferd Lewis wrote how UH made it into a bigger deal than it should have been.

If something that should have been such a slam dunk involved that much foot-dragging and so many smokescreens by the counsel's office and elsewhere, you wonder how long it would have taken had UH really had something juicy to hide. And, to think they fired Herman Frazier for his dithering.

Therein lies the problem. The stonewalling that surrounded the Sugar Bowl list makes people suspect the worst and reinforces long-held skepticism about UH. It underlines the worst of bureaucratic culture that can permeate UH, where, as someone once put it, rules exist to make more rules. A place where common sense and transparency are too often casualties.