Sports Watch

By Bill Kwon

Saturday, July 10, 1999

UH athletics takes
yet another hit

THE world certainly is getting smaller and smaller with today's instant communication.

Want to know what's going on some place, somewhere? Just "www.dot.com" it, and you are only a CNN-moment away from any breaking story halfway around the world.

Yet the University of Hawaii seems to be getting further and further away from the mainstream of college athletics.

If Athletic Director Hugh Yoshida is getting a sinking feeling that he's getting left out cold like an abandoned orphan, you can't blame him.

Nobody wants the Rainbows anymore. Or at least it seems that way. It's enough to give you a complex.

First, eight schools left the Western Athletic Conference, of which UH had been a member in good standing since 1979. They formed their own conference and didn't ask the Rainbows aboard. Geographic distance, in terms of travel costs. was cited as a major reason.

In leaving, not only did the Breakaway Eight depart with the old WAC's best basketball teams, they signed a seven-year, $47 million football TV deal with ESPN.

The revised WAC, which will add Nevada-Reno next year, could only sign a two-year TV football package with Fox Sports, with no up-front money to show for it.

THE latest snub, and you can call it that, is ESPN not picking up the option to televise the Rainbow Classic.

Without national television exposure, the Rainbow Classic might not be able to come up with a sponsor like Outrigger Hotels, which has plunked down $100,000 to get its name across the country.

It's too bad, but it should not have come as a complete surprise to anyone.

By aligning itself with the new Mountain West Conference, ESPN would hardly go out of its way to televise a tournament hosted by a team belonging to a conference that signed with another network.

Besides, ESPN has its own, made-for-television basketball tournament in Hawaii anyway -- the Maui Classic.

Kemper Sports runs it as a dummy corporation for Chaminade University, the tournament host in name only. But ESPN is the one really calling the shots by making out the dance card of what teams they want invited.

UH used to have that luxury in the Rainbow Classic, one of the few surviving eight-team tournaments. But now TV money talks.

Nothing is forever.

THE Hawaiian International Billfish Tournament ran for 40 years, only to be canceled this year.

The Rainbow Classic, which began in 1964, could suffer a similar fate if no sponsor steps forward. It would be another blow to UH's athletic prestige, which has taken a beating lately.

If the Rainbow Classic goes on life support and the Maui Classic thrives, it would be ironic indeed, for UH has been responsible in a large part for the latter's success.

Because its nearest Division I opponent is some 2,225 miles away, UH got an NCAA exemption, permitting teams coming here to play an extra game. Intended for football, it was broadened to include other sports, including basketball.

Now that NCAA exemption has come full circle to kick UH in the butt. Especially since it had been amended so that a school can use the exemption only once every four years.

With Chaminade, HPU, BYU-Hawaii and UH-Hilo also inviting teams here , the basketball invitation pool has shrunk considerably.

Sure, maybe 300 schools play Division I basketball. But fans want to see only about 50 of them on TV.