Yoshida admits flaws in contract system

By Stephen Tsai
Advertiser Staff Writer

It was a concept that started, literally, with a bang — a fist-to-counter tantrum — and resulted in a chorus of whispered protests.

Now, three years after awarding the first fixed-year contract, University of Hawai'i athletic director Hugh Yoshida admits to flaws in a system that was supposed to bring law and order to the way UH coaches are paid.

In particular, there is confusion and anxiety in the athletic department as the contract of men's volleyball coach Mike Wilton has lapsed for the second consecutive year, and softball coach Bob Coolen faces the June 30 expiration of his three-year contract. Also, men's basketball coach Riley Wallace, who led the Rainbows to the NCAA Tournament in March, is down to the final 10 months of his contract.

"We're working on it," Yoshida said. "I can understand where everybody is coming from."

For more than a decade, UH coaches were on the rollover system, in which their three-year contracts were reviewed annually. If they met a set criteria, they would receive a one-year extension — a rollover — and they would enter the ensuing season with three years left on their contracts. Consider the rollover system to be a gas tank that is refilled once a third of the fuel has been used.

But that changed in 1997, when then UH football coach Fred vonAppen was not awarded a rollover. VonAppen learned of the decision from a newspaper article he read while checking out of a Kaua'i hotel. VonAppen then protested to UH president Kenneth Mortimer, arguing that the rollover system put coaches under unfair scrutiny every year. If a coach did not receive a rollover, vonAppen said, the decision amounted to a public vote of "no confidence," crippling recruiting efforts.

Mortimer agreed, and soon after the UH Board of Regents approved a measure that awarded coaches fixed three- or five-year contracts.

But the new system did not come with a rule book, and last month Coolen expressed confusion over the protocol of when to renegotiate a contract.

While June Jones received a five-year extension soon after leading the Warriors to a postseason bowl in his first season as UH football coach, and recently hired baseball coach Mike Trapasso received a three-year contract, other coaches have watched their contracts wind down while their recruits questioned the programs' stability.

Even Yoshida endured anxious moments before receiving a multi-year extension.

"If you do your best, you can't worry about it, you can't ask for anything more," Yoshida said.

While Yoshida acknowledges the contract system impacts job security, he said, "that's the reason why the pay is substantially higher (for coaches and sports administrators) than other state employees. That's the nature of the beast. You deal with higher salaries as well as less job security."

Still, Yoshida said, waiting too long to settle contracts has been disruptive. "We need to work on it earlier than the final year (of a contract)," he said. "It's becoming a sensitive issue for the coaches."