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Sidelines
Kalani Simpson
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UH athletic director survives onslaught, so far
WHA-PISH!
What was that?
The sound of Rep. Mark Takai snapping on the rubber glove.
Mooooooon River!
Well, it went that way at times, yesterday, at the "informational briefing" of the UH athletic department before legislative education committees at the State Capitol.
Takai busted out Herman Frazier's contract. He busted out the budget, wanted to go over it line by line. He had a list of quotes of things Frazier had said in the media.
(Oh, great. Now Frazier will never say anything to the media again. To paraphrase something he said in the thick of the schedule uproar not long ago, he's starting to realize if you say stuff people will, you know, hold you to it.)
The Watergate Hearings weren't this rough. (They weren't this long.)
MAN, LET ME tell you something -- you do not want people who halfway know what they're doing going over your budget. Even if things check out.
The same way those rubber-glove exams may not find anything. But that doesn't mean you want to undergo the experience.
Still, it's important to have those every so often in order to stay healthy. Or so I'm told.
It was important that Frazier, Hawaii's athletic director, have to sit there and answer those questions for the people who could actually get him to sit there and answer those questions. That this was happening was a good thing.
Well, for the first hour and a half, anyway.
UH's strategy was clear. Wear out the committee with other speakers and cut down on the actual Frazier time. Finally, Rep. Jerry Chang said, "Could we call on Herman Frazier now?"
After Frazier made a short presentation he said that every UH coach there would now speak.
Um, no. They wanted to ask stuff of Frazier. And did. And it was good. And then they wouldn't stop.
It went from This is Important Stuff to That's Enough Now to What's the Point of This? To, What's the Point of Going On Living? It went on for more than 4 hours, 10 minutes. (Disclosure: I left after about 3 hours, 45 minutes. It was either that or snap and rush the panel. And you don't want something like that televised live on 'Olelo.)
Officially, this was for informational purposes and not a confrontation. But if it had been the latter, the legislators, after having scored big points early, had punched themselves out.
BY GRASPING for questions just to keep it going they had taken issues that held so much interest the audience was spilling out of the room and beaten those issues into the ground so badly by the end the place was emptying and most of those left were rolling their eyes.
UH could feel giddy just for surviving the onslaught. Interim chancellor Denise Konan was impressive. Some of the stuff Frazier said had sounded good.
But then -- and this was Takai's original point, before he dragged things into oblivion -- the things Frazier says almost always sound good. It's about when those things actually happen. Or if.