Press Box
Wagner and Yoshida
come full circleIN two weeks, Bob Wagner returns to the islands' sports scene and Hugh Yoshida will be done.
The former Hawaii football coach becomes the first athletics director at Kamehameha's Big Island campus the same morning the man who fired him as Rainbows coach hands over the reins of UH sports.
The symbolism isn't lost on Yoshida. He said he's happy Wagner has finally found a job in his beloved adopted home state after six years of exile.
"I know it was very painful for him," Yoshida said. "It was painful for everyone involved. But it's the nature of the beast that there's no job security in this business."
The reality is coaches get fired, even a coach who a few years prior brought home a conference championship and national ranking. Two monumental victories over Brigham Young and the 1992 Holiday Bowl win meant nothing after back-to-back losing seasons, and Wagner was messily sent on his way before the 1995 season even ended.
And athletics directors get pushed out, in subtle and not so subtle ways. Officially, Yoshida is retiring of his own accord, and is around the age to do so gracefully (please, no more stories about 25-year-old athletes "retiring" when they are actually quitting before they get cut). But if new university president Evan Dobelle hadn't taken as much of a hands-on approach in sports as he did his first year, Yoshida might have wanted to stick around for another contract.
Not that Yoshida isn't looking forward to retirement. After easing in Herman Frazier, he intends to spend his days in his garden and with his family -- not as executive director of the Hawaii Bowl that he helped hatch (although he might help out). That rumor just isn't true, Yoshida said, and agrees that the more logical speculation rests on likely-outgoing associate AD Jim Donovan getting that post.
So what about Bob?
Wagner said he's taking a pay cut at his new job, but not that big of one. Some would say he's suffering a drop in prestige, too, since he is leaving the post of assistant head football coach at Texas-El Paso. But he doesn't see it that way.
"I don't know where someone got that I was making $80,000 at UTEP," Wagner said. "I'll be making a little less now, but if it was all about money we wouldn't have stayed in Hawaii as long as we did. Quality of life is more important."
He would have never left after 19 years if he didn't have to. That became obvious as his name became connected with applying for all kinds of jobs here, including UH athletics director.
"It's exciting to do something from the ground up," Wagner said of his new challenge.
He said he won't coach football, but you know he's got a strong pool to draw from.
Then there's this other little twist. The hiring came to light a day before the story broke of another Kamehameha neighbor island campus admitting a non-Hawaiian student.
Now, Bob Wagner doesn't possess a drop of Hawaiian blood. But so what? This is clearly a man who really wants to be here. He proved a long time ago he cares about Hawaii's youth when he volunteered to be a Big Brother (anyone who's done it will tell you it's a lot more than taking a kid to a game once in a while).
In this case it's the heart that matters, not what's flowing through the veins.
Dave Reardon, who covered sports in Hawaii from 1977 to 1998,
moved to the the Gainesville Sun, then returned to
the Star-Bulletin in Jan. 2000.
E-mail Dave: dreardon@starbulletin.com