At a press conference yesterday afternoon, he turned to the private sector for help with the charter flights being sought by UH head coach Fred vonAppen.

Cayetano also said he didn't want to get involved in the daily budget dealings at the university and wouldn't tell UH president Kenneth Mortimer to restore the $1.2 million being chopped from the athletic department's budget over the next three years.

"We don't have control at the University of Hawaii and the University of Hawaii has its own ways of doing things," Cayetano said. "The university has lump-sum budgeting and pretty much does the details of its budget process.

"I just make a cut. If I determine that it should have a 9 percent cut, that's all I do. I restored, incidentally, $10 million of university funds out of the $14 million that were cut because the economy has gotten better.

"That may slow the process; I don't know because it's still up to president Mortimer and the board of regents to divvy up the money."

UH athletic director Hugh Yoshida said earlier he would meet with Mortimer to see if there is any way to hold off this process for at least a year to meet some of vonAppen's demands.

Not only does vonAppen want charter flights, he is asking the university to upgrade present facilities, improve the recruiting budget and look into a year-round training table for players off campus.

Cayetano plans to meet with Aloha Stadium officials to see if they can lift the $80,000 rental fee the university pays for each game and to look into sharing money generated by parking and concessions.

He also wants to see UH officials discuss issues such as tutoring services, academic nonqualifiers out of high school and charter flights.

"One reason we don't have charter flights is because the university feels it's very expensive," Cayetano said. "We need to be creative and come up with a plan for charter flights.

"We need to borrow some ideas from schools like Stanford and UCLA because basically they are a private-public type of partnership. We have to begin exploring ways to get the private sector involved to support charter flights.

"If it costs the University of Hawaii $56,000 to send the team to Laramie (Wyo.), I would expect the charter flight not to cost the university any more, but the balance would be paid for by the private sector. This is done all over the country. I don't know why it's been so slow here."

Cayetano also said he didn't want the football program to play on a Division II level.

"I don't think there is support in this state for the University of Hawaii to drop to a Division II level," Cayetano said. "We have already demonstrated that we can compete at Division I.

"Our trip to the Holiday Bowl demonstrates that. We need to make a decision whether we are going to go forward and support the program at that level or not. I think we should."