Honolulu Lite
SO now we know why St. Louis School football coach Cal Lee wasn't picked to be coach of the University of Hawaii Rainbow Warriors. The UH couldn't afford Lee's 20 (or so) assistant coaches. St. Louis boots
Mario off of teamJune Jones only has nine assistant coaches but somehow has managed to turn the losingest football team in the country into a conference champion. And despite Jones' success, UH president Ken Mortimer still has his job.
Not so the Rev. Mario Pariante, the St. Louis president who was given the boot, or more accurately, the football cleats, by the Catholic school's board of trustees because of his old fashioned notion that academics are more important than football.
There are places where football is more important than schoolin'. Like most of the state of Texas, where mothers of potential cheerleaders have been willing to take a life to get their daughters on the squad.
But until recent disclosures about the St. Louis football program, most people thought Hawaii had generally kept the sports-vs.-academics equation in balance.
Twenty assistant football coaches? Notre Dame, another fairly well-known Catholic school, doesn't have 20 assistant football coaches, didn't even when the Gipper was on the team.
You can't argue with St. Louis' football success. You apparently can't even discuss, debate or toss it around.
Pariante's sin, it seems, was to mention in an interview that while the St. Louis football program has been a success for 14 years, the academic program has been a success for 153 years. Father forgive him, he knew not on who's toes he stepped.
Pariante is lucky he only got fired for such sacrilege. If he had been in Texas, he would have been run out of the state by Texas rangers and a posse of less savory members of the Bush family.
WE knew something was out of whack at St. Louis when the football team went on a drinking and property damage spree in Las Vegas. Pariante, showing the patience of Job and the political savvy of former House Speaker Tip O'Neil, merely suspended 60 players for one day. He knew which side his paycheck was buttered on.
Now, let's see, a bunch of high school kids on the mainland are suspended from school for two years for fighting in the stands during a football game. Yet 60 high school kids from Hawaii, who broke Las Vegas laws regarding alcohol consumption and the destruction of property, get a one-day suspension. You don't need the Rev. Jesse Jackson to tell you something is wrong with this team photo.
St. Louis is a private school so it is basically free to hire and fire whomever it wants for school president. But you have to think that most of the parents of non-football-playing students are wondering about the board of trustees' priorities. Forget academics. Just in the sports department, of which Cal Lee also is director, how is the money being divided up? How many assistant coaches are there for the volleyball team. Or water polo? Or the billiards squad?
If football is hogging all the money, some other team must be suffering. Maybe St. Louis would be a national high school tetherball powerhouse if Cal would just cough up five or six assistant football coaches.
With all the controversy, the pressure on the football team to win must be intense. Forget the Gipper, these kids have to win every game or, saints preserve us, they'll have to start hitting the books instead of halfbacks.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to charley@nomayo.com or
71224.113@compuserve.com.
The Honolulu Lite online archive is at:
https://archives.starbulletin.com/lite