New UH athletic director keeping an eye on future

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Writer

Even for somebody who ran with the fastest crowd in the world, Olympians and world-class athletes, Herman Ronald Frazier still managed to stand out at an early age.

Even as an Olympic athlete, Herman Frazier was organized. It is a trait that has served him well during his rise from athlete to athletic director. Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

"We were the only ones on the (track) circuit that carried them then. This was back in the 1970s and the other guys, they'd see us coming and laugh," Wells said. "It was like, 'who do you guys think you are? What are you supposed to be?' "

Wells said, "Herman was always working on something; thinking about different things. He'd have his school books in there and whatever business or other project he was working on at the time."

Now, Wells said, savoring the last laugh, "the same guys who used to laugh at Herman and me say 'we wish we were more like you guys back then.' "

Wells is a prominent sports agent, whose client list includes Marion Jones, and Frazier, a U.S. Olympic Committee vice president, is the University of Hawai'i athletic director-designate.

Friends, acquaintances and former co-workers paint a picture of the 47-year old Frazier, who will take over operation of the 19-sport, $16 million UH athletic program Aug. 1, as someone for whom gold (4x400 meter relay) and bronze (400 meters) medals in the 1976 Olympics were but a career starting point, not the finish line.

"Herman was always looking ahead," said Senon "Baldy" Castillo, ASU's track coach from 1953-'79.

"He's one of the most prepared individuals I have ever met," said New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, who has come to know Frazier through their Olympic work. "He's very detail oriented. It is like I say, it isn't the elephants that will get you, it is those mice at your feet."

The only bad thing about "Herman going to Hawai'i is that I'm jealous," Steinbrenner said.

Frazier had almost stumbled into a world-class track career. What would come afterward, he had decided, would not be left to chance.

Standout high school athlete

At Germantown High in Philadelphia, Frazier played all the sports, including overlapping in baseball and track in the spring. But his event, at least initially, was the high jump. Only later would he find his way to the 400 meters.

At one point he passed up the Philadelphia All-City Track Meet to attend a school field trip, and after high school he turned down several athletic scholarships to work in a department store.

"But three months was enough," Frazier said. "I decided that wasn't for me and I needed to go back to school. I understood what an education meant."

Initially he ran track for Dennison University, a Division III school in Granville, Ohio, where he made a name for himself and caught the eye of U.S. track officials who convinced him of an Olympic future if he went to a bigger school and better climate.

After considering several schools, Frazier said he chose Arizona State, sight unseen. "When I told my father I was going to go there and was going to get a scholarship, he thought I was kidding," Frazier said.

It would be the start of a quarter-century love affair in the Valley of the Sun, where he went from athlete to graduate assistant coach up the ladder to eventual senior associate athletic director. Had he gotten the AD job in 2000, Frazier says he would have been content to stay there until retirement.

"You won't find anyone more well thought of here, especially by the coaches, than Herman," said John Spini, the gymnastics coach.

"Herman did the job in so many areas — fund-raising, facilities, organization," said baseball coach Pat Murphy. "There wasn't anything he couldn't — or didn't — do at this school."

When Frazier was about to be passed over for AD in favor of the much more experienced Gene Smith in 2000, all but a couple of the head coaches of the school's 23 sports gathered in President Lattie Coor's reception room to plead Frazier's case.

Olympic background

The afternoon sun is reflecting off the five diamonds set in an Olympic configuration that represents the five continents on Frazier's U.S. Olympic ring.

As he removes the ring and passes it around the table, Frazier talks about the Olympics with a glow that has not faded since the heady days of Montreal.

It was, in fact, the Olympic experience of 1976 and the disappointment of what happened to the next two, 1980 and '84, that gave Frazier a cause to pursue a career in the movement beyond that of an athlete.

The boycott of the XXII Games in Moscow in 1980 mandated by President Jimmy Carter, "was so devastating; a lot of us wanted to get more involved to make sure politics never got involved in the Olympics to that point again," Frazier said.

When the Soviet Union in turn boycotted the 1984 Los Angeles Games, Frazier said, "it was time the Olympic athletes stepped forward and made their voices heard so what happened in those years would never, ever happen again. You had, for one example, Renaldo Nehemiah, who was the world record holder in the hurdles, who later played football for the 49ers. But, because of the boycott, he never got to run in the Olympics. And, that just wasn't right."

Changes at UAB

Next week, when much of the athletic department staff at UAB is scheduled to begin moving into new offices, the irony that Frazier, the man behind it, will be moving out is not lost on them.

"This was one of his first projects and it is sad he won't be here to enjoy it," said Judy Nichols, head secretary in the Blazers' athletic department.

Leaning up against a wall in Frazier's old office, she said, are architect's drawings for a makeover of much of UAB's athletic facilities. They are testament to the dreams he arrived with 20 months earlier and the need to catch up with the growth pains of a school that had charged head-long into Division I membership six years earlier.

UAB, a commuter school of nearly 17,000 students, is something of a stepchild. In a state dominated athletically and politically by powerhouses Alabama and Auburn, UAB isn't sure where it is supposed to fit in.

Some powerbrokers, those who pushed to fast-track the Blazers into football just six years ago and have underwritten a series of budget deficits, want UAB to contend for championships from Conference USA.

Others, who believe everything must revolve around the University of Alabama, think anything UAB gets in terms of state resources — money, acclaim or athletes — takes away from the "mother school" 60 miles away at Tuscaloosa.

When W. Ann Reynolds, a former chancellor of the California State University System and City University of New York, became president of UAB in 1997 she brought a dynamic vision to the 28-year old school. Soon to be derisively nicknamed the "Woman Warrior" in an area of the country where hard-charging women, especially "outsiders" are not always welcomed, she also brought a self-described micromanager's touch and a fearlessness to dive into state politics.

Early on she persuaded state legislators representing the Birmingham area to earmark millions of additional dollars for the long-neglected UAB campus, an allocation that reportedly incensed presidents of other campuses, their lawmakers and trustees. Collectively, Reynolds and her posse became known as the "UAB Bandits."

She would hire Frazier, the state's first black Division I-A athletic director and an "outsider" from ASU in 2000, just as the backlash that eventually forced her out last month was starting to hit.

It would also be Frazier's misfortune to follow local legend Gene Bartow, the school's former basketball coach. Bartow, for whom the school's gym was named, was replaced as basketball coach by his son, Murray under whom the program declined. Frazier's firing of Murray this year would add further controversy.

"I compare his coming here to Jackie Robinson in baseball," said state representative Oliver Robinson, a former UAB basketball star. "He came into a hostile environment that wasn't of his making. But he did the best he could. He would have done the job, too, if they had given him a chance. Our loss is (UH's) gain."

Oliver Robinson said neither the $7.5 million deficit Frazier inherited nor the Title IX lawsuit that came soon after his arrival were of his doing.

"He (Frazier) is a very business-like, very attentive, broadly connected individual who handled a very difficult assignment very well," said Cleo Thomas, a former Alabama trustee.

For all the notoriety given the deficit and lawsuit — and hardly anybody lays the responsibility for them at Frazier's feet — the knock on him, according to detractors, was that he was an "absentee AD" who did not spend enough time on fund-raising.

"I don't know if that was true, but that was the impression," said John McMahon, a trustee.

Nichols, the AD's secretary, said, "I handled his appointments and bookings and he was always very involved. He'd have 20-30 appointments a week with boosters, staff and media. I've been here almost 24 years and the two years he was here he was always working to get a lot done. He'll be missed by the staff."

High expectations at UH

When he moves into his new office Aug. 1, Frazier will be the highest paid athletic administrator in the school's history, earning $210,000 or nearly double what his predecessor, Hugh Yoshida, was paid last year.

The process that brought Frazier here will have cost UH approximately $60,000, including a fee equal to 25 percent of his first year's salary to be paid to the search firm of Eastman & Beaudine.

For this UH will expect its new AD to take the program to a higher level, help the school to a global position and balance a new budget that is already pledged to grow by $1 million or more from this year (the new fiscal year starts July 1) and by at least $750,000 in each of the next five years.

In addition to Frazier's own deal, he will be responsible for coming up with the money to pay for men's basketball coach Riley Wallace's new $200,000 deal, men's volleyball coach Mike Wilton's $90,000 package and Yoshida's final year at $180,000 (he earned a reported $120,000 this fiscal year). Wahine volleyball coach Dave Shoji is expected to receive a raise to $100,000 shortly and football coach June Jones' contract extension could go back on the table at anytime.

Frazier has said he would like to bring in at least one senior staff member and will likely have to significantly top associate athletic director Jim Donovan's reported $80,000 for each.

Under provisions of the school's gender equity plan, the athletic department will be responsible for raising the budget for women's sports by $600,000 each of the next five years.

The new ticket surcharge policy approved by the Board of Regents Friday, the same time that Frazier was confirmed, will help somewhat.

Hawai'i's next AD will still have his work cut out for him. But it isn't like he wasn't warned.

As David McClain, head of the search committee, joked during Frazier's introduction, UH doesn't expect much — just "God on a good day."