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UH happy with
the Home Team

WE now return you to our regularly scheduled broadcast ...

That's what happened, yesterday. Nothing. Well, not nothing, certainly. UH just picked up a truckload of cash. That's a pretty big something.

That's $1.75 million worth of something. A year.

But after all the anticipation and all the anxiety and all the tales of Oceanic's endless, Uncle Scrooge-like mountain of bags with dollar signs on them, after UH athletic director Herman Frazier saying this will be a decision based on business, not sentiment -- after KFVE's sob-inducing video good-bye -- this is what we have.

We now return to our regularly scheduled broadcast.

Anybody else just a little bit surprised?

I will admit it, this one snuck up on me, this announcement about the awarding of the UH sports television contract. I'll tell you straight out, this pronouncement is a little more anticlimactic than the one I saw coming.

Don't get me wrong. That's not disappointment talking. Just surprise.

I'm a big fan of KFVE's sports broadcasts.

I'm a huge Jim Leahey fan.

Leahey's voice is part of UH history.

And that's kind of the point, no? KFVE is historic and traditional and comfortable and, yes, KFVE is home.

KFVE is 22 years of memories, misty watercolor memories, scattered pictures of the smiles we gave to one another. Of the way we were.

And so you had to have wondered if someone new wouldn't be better suited to showing us silver and black.

UH is still trying to establish a new era. And as this current incarnation of the UH athletic program has tried to validate a new image, the biggest reminder of its former image just might be ... KFVE.

I wouldn't have been shocked had UH opted for a little less Al Michaels and a little more Stuart Scott. ESPN it up a little.

I thought it might want a show to go with the uniforms.

But in the end, Hawaii stuck with the classic, the tried and true. After all that fuss we seamlessly return to our regularly scheduled broadcast. And that's good. I'm glad. There's something to be said for continuity, for dancing with the one you've been with all these years.

Oh, yeah. And those 1.75 big ones a year didn't hurt, either.