ANALYSIS
UH athletic director job equals CEO

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Writer

YOSHIDA: Retiring from UH in December

That distinction, Mortimer said, belonged to the school's athletic director.

A former Western Athletic Conference commissioner long ago went him one better, calling the job of AD at UH the most challenging in the country.

As UH prepares the search for the next person to lead its athletic program, it is worth remembering that while it is a job that can consume anybody, it is not a position for everybody.

Athletic director is a misnomer for a job that is, in reality, the chief executive officer of the most visible enterprise in Hawai'i, a $16-million, 19-sport operation. It is the state's only Division IA athletic program with educational responsibilities.

As the late Stan Sheriff, perhaps the school's most accomplished AD, used to put it, "Our fans and the (upper campus) want us to be Harvard during the week and Nebraska on Saturday nights."

While that might hold true in some other places as well, "Hawai'i, with its challenges, is a unique situation," said Bob Beaudine, whose Texas-based executive selection firm, Eastman & Beaudine Inc., has assisted in athletic director searches for 14 schools.

Indeed, limits of geography and population long ago rendered UH a case apart from its Division IA brethren, posing financial and conference alignment hardships beyond what confront the other 116 schools.

Time and the breakup of the old 16-team WAC have exacerbated them to the point that whoever succeeds Hugh Yoshida in December will find the issues square in the middle of the plate.

"The biggest is conference affiliation, and I don't say that to be critical," said Rick Bay, San Diego State athletic director, whose school left the WAC for the Mountain West two years ago. "I just think conferences in the West, except the Pac-10, are in a state of flux. That's a concern not only for the WAC but for a number of schools out here as we look for stability and viability for the future."

"Conference affiliation is the big issue because where you are means big dollars," Beaudine said.

That's no small concern for UH, whose population base is limited, whose television market, 72nd nationally, is small and whose travel budget — in excess of $1 million — is an industry leader.

Apart from what marquee opponents and compelling match-ups will do for the gate, conference affiliation says a lot about how a school is perceived and how it must compete.

The more lucrative the pooled television, bowl and sponsorship packages, the more money member schools share in. With Pac-10 schools each receiving approximately $4 million — or more — annually compared to a fraction of that for WAC and Mountain West schools, there is a widening gap in salaries and facilities that can dictate competitiveness.

As such, it behooves UH's next hire to be someone who has already established relationships across several conferences in the West.

What happened to UH in the tumultuous WAC breakup has underlined the importance of having at its helm someone who not only has a pulse on the industry but the ability to project a profile in it come the next round of realignment.

And as much as UH needs its next AD to have Mainland contacts, the push to get the Legislature to turn over control of Aloha Stadium, as football coach June Jones is seeking, suggests there will also be a premium on being able to negotiate the alleys of power here, too.

Then, there is the matter of expanding boosters and businesses to help underwrite critical areas of the program, including sala-ries.

"To me, the perception is that it might be difficult for an outsider to come in right away and get a lot done," Bay said. "I would think it would be quite a challenge without some local contacts."

Once upon a time the athletic director's chair was where old coaches went when they were kicked into retirement. It was a comfortable reward for services rendered.

No longer. "Even if you are a highly successful coach within the parameters of your own sport that doesn't mean you'll be a successful (AD) in this day and age," said Dutch Baughman, executive director of the Division I Athletic Directors Association. "There's too much that goes into it now."

Increasingly, ADs have MBAs to go with their college letters. They are as comfortable in a corporate environment as the playing arenas. At one point recently the Big Ten had ADs whose resumes included Kraft Foods Inc. and Procter & Gamble Co.

A successful AD is "someone who can wear a lot of hats," Baughman said. Marketing, fund-raising, politics, media — "it takes a knowledge of all of them. At one of our meetings we were identifying the various stakeholders — administration, faculty, students, alumni, sponsors, etc. — an AD interacts with and we came up with over 40," Baughman said.

Recalled Mortimer: "Some people want (the UH AD) to concentrate on whether the scoreboard works on a given day."