Hawaii AD Frazier
has a busy summer
ahead of himJones' pact is done, but Frazier
has other deals to work on
and a vice president to hire
It was a typical day at the office after being away for a few days.
Return phone calls. Attend six meetings before lunch. Pay bills. Open mail. Work on contracts for coaches. Finish up the details on a national search for a new assistant athletic director of marketing.
Pay a lot of bills.
Those were the tasks that greeted Herman Frazier after his weekend trip to NCAA Headquarters in Indianapolis. The Hawaii athletic director's day-planner was full, with closing the books on the 2002-03 fiscal year a high priority.
Frazier said he won't know the final tally for another few weeks but he expects the athletic department to be in the red. The reported $1 million deficit figure is "in the ballpark," he said. "We just don't have the final numbers. How far inside or outside of the ballpark, we don't know yet."
Will it be as high as last year's deficit of $1.43 million?
"We hope we're not up there," Frazier said. "We still have outstanding vouchers and expense reports that aren't in yet. We should have everything in and an answer in the next two weeks."
Easing the burden of the deficit is a $1 million "loan" from the university itself, making good on the commitment to the athletic department that Frazier had received earlier from Chancellor Peter Englert. The interest-free loan must be repaid within three years.
Given the encouragement from season ticket sales in football and women's volleyball, and the success of pay-per-view sales, repayment isn't expected to be a problem, according to Frazier. After two years of outside financial help -- the 2001-02 bailout came out of reserve funds -- he hopes the athletic department will start becoming self-sufficient as of this fiscal year, which began Tuesday.
Helping the outlook is money raised from increased premium seat donations in football and women's volleyball.
"We had anticipated between $300,000 and $500,000, and we're close to that already," he said.
But that doesn't mean that Frazier is satisfied with the estimated $18 million athletic budget he has to work with. He knows that upgrading the UH athletic program will cost money, more money than he currently has.
The expansion of the Atlantic Coast Conference, which added Miami and Virginia Tech last month, will likely create a domino effect with schools from Conference USA likely jumping elsewhere. The ACC is still looking to add a 12th team, possibly as soon as next year.
Frazier looks at Louisville, a C-USA member, as one school that will be attractive to other conferences. He sees the Cardinals athletic program, which offers the same number of intercollegiate sports as UH, as a model.
Louisville has an athletic budget of $31 million, nearly double that of UH's. There is a new on-campus football stadium, sponsored by the Papa John's pizza chain, and there have been big monetary commitments to hiring top coaches, including Rick Pitino for men's basketball.
"Louisville has stepped it up and I believe they might have the highest budget in the country for a non-BCS affiliated school," he said. "No question, there will be a domino effect, that this is the first movement. I know that (Western Athletic Conference commissioner) Karl Benson has had telephone calls with several conferences, but I don't know who."
Benson was unavailable for comment yesterday.
However, he did say last month that Tulane, a current C-USA member, would be an attractive school should the 10-school WAC consider another expansion.
Frazier has several things on his agenda to take care of in between his two major trips this summer. A vice president for the USOC, he will be at the Pan American Games in the Dominican Republic, Aug. 1-17, and, as the U.S. Chef de Mission for the 2004 Games, he will also attend a pre-Olympic meeting in August in Athens.
When baseball coach Mike Trapasso and women's volleyball coach Dave Shoji return from the mainland later this month, Frazier will be discussing their contract renewals.
The athletic director is also continuing his department reorganization, which includes a new job title and duties for Senior Woman Administrator Marilyn Moniz-Kaho'ohanohano.
The restructuring includes the addition of the new assistant A.D.-marketing, with that national search beginning this month. He expects to be interviewing candidates in two weeks.
Frazier is also anticipating adding men's cross country to meet the WAC requirement for championship sports.
Hyrum Peters goes to media days: Warrior senior safety Hyrum Peters will serve as UH's player representative and team spokesman at the WAC media days July 24-25 in Boise, Idaho.
Peters, a returning first team All-WAC defender, was selected to meet with media that cover conference schools. Last season he had 77 tackles and four interceptions, starting 12 games before sitting out against Alabama due to injury. Peters also broke the school record for interception yardage (176) in a season and most interceptions returned for touchdowns in a season and in a career (3).
BACK TO TOP |
Pay-per-view sales
of UH football expected
to rise 20%, Oceanic says
Though the price of Hawaii football games on pay-per-view sales is going up this fall, an Oceanic Time Warner official expects a sizable increase in sales.
According to Norman Santos, vice president of operations at Oceanic Time Warner, the company averaged about 9,000 sales per game last year, not including commercial establishments. With nearly two months to go before the Warriors' season-opener, he estimated that they've sold one-third of that total in season-ticket packages.
"My expectation is that we're probably going to exceed last year's sales by about 20 percent, looking at the current numbers," Santos said. "But it's really early and what generally happens is we get 3,000 orders on the day of the game. So to have this many, we're really encouraged with what's going on."
Live pay-per-view broadcasts of Warriors home games began last year and generated about $446,000 for UH.
"As we succeed so does UH," Santos said. "Last year we did real well and this year we expect to do a lot better."
This year's pay-per-view season ticket package includes six games for $100 on Oahu and $40 on the neighbor islands. The early-renewal period runs until July 15 with packages priced at $75 for Oahu and $25 for neighbor islands.
Individual games are $25 and $35 (premium) on Oahu and $10 and $15 on the neighbor islands.
Last year, viewers were charged $75 for seven games.
"I think we showed last year that home attendance didn't drop (significantly) and we were able to generate all this pay-per-view money," Santos said. "I think it goes hand in hand, each one generates interest in a different way."
Santos said digital service will again include multiple viewing options and a system to handle the rush of last-minute orders will be implemented.