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Sidelines Kalani Simpson |
UH must change
its rogue imageNOW comes the final piece of this Hawaii Bowl puzzle (months later this fiasco of a loss is still haunting Hawaii) and the completed picture begs a question.
What the heck is going on over there at Lower Campus Road?
How to put this delicately. This looks ... the opposite of good.
(Bad.)
After blowing off a Western Athletic Conference bowl eligibility rule, after coughing up a lung against Tulane -- TULANE! -- after a WAC reprimand and fine and after indignant victimhood and defiant bluster and placing blame everywhere but in the mirror, we find out that:
>> UH has known (at least) since Dec. 28 that it did play in the Hawaii Bowl with an ineligible player.
>> That ineligible player was star quarterback Timmy Chang.
This does not look good.
Ohio State not good.
The UH athletic department comes off badly here. The flouting of rules. Playing an ineligible player who just happens to be your All-America candidate. The attitude. The timing. The months of secrecy.
If you're looking to draw conclusions, UH just gave you a canvas and a double-decker box of crayons.
NOW, THERE ARE two sides to every story. But the problem is, it's Hawaii's side of the story that I'm going with.
Defiance. Doing whatever the hell it wants. Contempt for authority. Belittling the accusation and blaming everyone else.
Hawaii against the world.
"Don't play it," June Jones said yesterday of the bowl game, "or play it."
No, UH could have tried to work with the rule, to work with the WAC. It might have taken care of business. It chose to strap up the helmets, instead.
Sure, Jones and his bring-it-on bravado -- a good thing, for a football team -- have contributed to this culture at UH. Undoubtedly. But it shouldn't even come to the point where that's an issue. That's not his department.
Of course a football coach wants his contract kept secret. Of course a coach will give his players every benefit of every doubt. Of course every decision that goes against him is utterly insane and unbelievably unfair. Have you seen this man working officials on the sideline?
That's how football coaches feel about these things.
No, it's an athletic director's job to take over here, to be the voice of reason, to set the tone, to cross every T.
To be on top of everything, and be in charge.
Something was missing, in this mess.
Associate AD Tom Sadler took some leadership yesterday, and UH finally took a little responsibility.
"We are committed to complying with conference and NCAA rules," Sadler said. "And we're going to take our medicine."
Wow. That sounded better than anything that has come out of Manoa in a long time, and I told Sadler so. This is the opposite of the attitude we've come to expect.
Sadler said, No, UH will be about rules, and right, and not wanting to be seen as a defiant, maverick outfit.
He's new.
Instead, we've seen this "six-credit" scandal, picking a fight with the conference, an ineligible player, sanctions.
You would think that following rules would mean more than not backing down.
And there was a secret contract, something a pro like Herman Frazier had to have known was illegal, Athletic Director 101. And a disgraceful football fight that was all but condoned (and even if you're a maniac who thinks a bench-clearing brawl is something to be proud of, the worst part is that in the aftermath Frazier got out-spun by that buffoon from Cincinnati).
Every time I shake Frazier's hand I like him. It's hard not to. He's intelligent. Impressive.
He found the big money for Jones' new contract and deserves credit for that, and has gotten it (though as much as Jones has said publicly that money doesn't matter to him, you have to question Frazier's negotiating strategy). And he deftly eased Leigh Steinberg's Superagent Inc. out of the marketing pool while spinning it as a win-win.
He can do the job. He has the credentials and the skill.
But to steal a football coaches' credo, "The tape don't lie."
And UH has not had a good last few months.
Now Hawaii's reputation just took a dive.
Some will argue this "six-credit" rule -- passing at least that many hours in the semester leading up to the bowl, and certifying everyone's grades by kickoff a few days later -- is a bad one. It is. And Fresno State sat seven players last December, just to be sure. Just because it's the rule.
Some will try to tell you that no other conference had the rule. Tell that to Iowa State, which lost three starters on the day of the game at last year's Humanitarian Bowl. (And in the Big 12, forget pass/fail, you needed a "C.")
Some will tell you that it doesn't matter, that UH can do no wrong, even when it does.
And Jones is right. In the bigger picture the most important thing is that Chang went back to class and made up his work and got a "B." And that's great.
But the bigger, bigger picture is that if UH doesn't do a better job on this stuff it may start to look like an outlaw school. Today, it already does.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com
