Extra Point

By Mike Fitzgerald

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All columnists were sent a memo to work in a plug for us being on the Internet, so there you go. Actually, that's not true - the part about the memo - but it never hurts to be a team player, especially in my case, where readers demand on the hour that I be fired or fed to hungry sharks.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Costco in Hawaii Kai. Actually, I was looking for a good deal on socks, underwear and Old Milwaukee 12-packs, not something unpractical like a silly computer.

But guess who I ran into? Former UH head football coach Bob Wagner. He was buying some new lawn darts.

"Hi Mike," he said. "I've been playing a lot of lawn darts these days and I wore out my last set. Why don't you stop over and I'll show you how to play.

"You just stand a few feet away from me and I throw these giant steel darts at you."

OK, I didn't really run into ol' Wags. But being in Hawaii Kai for the first time in years made me wonder what he was up to, since he lives there.

Now don't go running to the phone to call my boss. And no sneaky e-mail, either, whatever the heck that is.

"He's picking on poor Bob Wagner after he got fired. Please put Fitzgerald on the next Matson container ship to Afghanistan."

Actually, Wagner has a good chunk of two years left on his contract, which means the University of Hawaii - or us taxpayers - are giving him $100,000 a year or so to watch soap operas. Or whatever unemployed and "not bought-out" coaches do in their idle time.

Now I come from the "do as little work as possible for as much money as possible generation," so to be honest, I'm pretty darn jealous of Wagner.

He gets to sit in a nice house with his nice family and has plenty of time and cash, which make a wonderful combination if used effectively.

He can even fire off his resume if a decent job pops up - and then not worry that much if he gets it.

Plus, he doesn't have any of the headaches that are already plaguing new UH coach Fred vonAppen, such as implementing a passing offense with no one on the roster who can toss a spiral.

ACTUALLY, this was supposed to lead into a column about Wagner's Hawaii Kai neighbor, UH men's basketball coach Riley Wallace. So let's switch from Wags to Wally.

I don't think that Wallace should be fired, since there were others involved in screwing up this past season, especially in the strange suspension of leading scorer Tes Whitlock.

On the other hand, the team lost a few close games that it should have won, even with Whitlock.

And UH fans are getting weary of trying to sneak into the NCAA Tournament by winning the WAC tournament strategy, which really won't work with the expanded WAC next season.

So I say don't roll over - which means add another year - to Wallace's contract, which has two years remaining on it.

It sure doesn't look like it on paper, but Riley swears that the Rainbows will be decent next season, even with the loss of the team's three best players: Whitlock, Justice Sueing and Anthony Harris.

Yes, we all remember how Wallace stood up at the Wagner firing press conference and undressed UH president Kenneth Mortimer and athletic director Hugh Yoshida, much to their displeasure.

That shouldn't matter, though. Hey, if you can't stand up and rant and rave - even if it doesn't make much sense - on a college campus, where can you do it? Hotel Street, I guess.

But Dr. Mort and Yoshida should give Wallace at least one more season.

Besides, we can't afford to pay two ex-coaches thousands of dollars to play lawn darts at the same time.