THIS week, I've been a little apprehensive about attending spring football practice at Cooke Field because the sky is falling over there. Cutting a men’s sport
not the answer at UHPerhaps you've read or heard the disturbing news that University of Hawaii athletics director Hugh Yoshida has a big pair of ribbon-cutting scissors handy just in case he has to use them for the first time since the dedication of the softball stadium.
Oh yeah. It's true. Seems like the boys downtown -- presumably the same ones who helped Yoshida get this job in the first place -- have had to put more heads on the chopping block than King Henry VIII's private executioner.
A snip snip here, a snip snip there, and a couple of la-di-das later, and suddenly Yoshida has to trim a men's sport to balance the books.
I know, I know. We've heard this song and dance before. Wasn't it just last summer that UH president Kenneth Mortimer decided at the last minute not to cut $452,000 from this year's athletic department budget?
But this time, no kidding now, everybody swears it's true. Yoshida contacted his favorite media outlets after learning that the state Senate's latest proposed budget had this little item in it that said, "Sorry Hugh. Do not pass Go, and give us back our half-million dollars while you're at it. We need it for a toll booth on Ford Island bridge to help cover that outrageous $80 million price tag."
YOSHIDA's reaction was similar to that of talk-show host David Letterman: "Help me. Help me. I've been hypnotized." He was so sure no cuts were coming his way, his department did nothing to prepare for this eventuality.
To make matters worse, somebody down at the attorney general's office decided Yoshida can't jack season-ticket prices for football through the roof without holding a public hearing first.
I'm not sure how Yoshida side-stepped this issue when he recently raised ticket prices for volleyball and basketball, but supposedly, the Legislature is going to write a new law to help him.
If the boys downtown fail him, Yoshida isn't sure what he will do. On one hand, UH is adding exciting sports like women's water polo -- the 22nd Division I program in America, if you're keeping score at home -- and on the other, he's facing a deficit that could grow to Titanic proportions by the middle of summer.
As a last resort, he will cut a men's sport, leaving UH at the Division I minimum of six. The current seven survivors are football, basketball, baseball, volleyball, tennis, golf, and swimming and diving.
I'm not that good with math, but the first four in that group generally make money, and the latter three don't. Even if you cut one of those last three sports, there's no way that covers the shortfalls.
So Hugh, I've decided to make a few proposals to help you out, and I promise one won't be that old adage that the football team has to win.
FIRST, call the boys downtown and tell them you're charging a half-million dollars to use the Stan Sheriff Center for the Miss Universe pageant. See if they like that goodwill gesture. If this really is the biggest thing since the Olympics -- and I swear I read that somewhere -- then a half-million bucks is chump change.
If that doesn't work, tell your good friend Eddie Hayashi down at Aloha Stadium that the $750,000 rent money for this football season is in the mail. What are they going to do if you don't pay them -- tell you to go to Maui?
Of course, you could always come clean and say it was all a big joke. That you really can meet your budget if you do something, anything, about the dwindling attendance at baseball games, or if you come up with creative cuts, better promotional ideas and a vision of where this program will be -- hopefully not the poor house -- in the 21st century.
Maybe then, the sky won't fall every time the boys downtown are in session.
Paul Arnett has been covering sports
for the Star-Bulletin since 1990.