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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Thursday, February 27, 2003

It's only fair to play by rules

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

With 4,035 miles and five time zones, travel across the vast Western Athletic Conference is a challenge.

The conference doesn't have the national profile you might wish for nor many established rivalries, yet.

But, it is also the only conference home the University of Hawai'i has.

Unless the Warriors/Rainbow Warriors/Rainbow Wahine/Rainbows plan to go independent, not a recommended course of action for a school 2,500 miles off the beaten Division I-A path, there aren't a whole lot of options open right now.

So, it behooves UH to hold up its end of WAC membership and make the most of where it is. That includes, as UH was pointedly reminded yesterday, playing by all the rules — not just the easy or the most convenient ones.

When UH failed to certify its football players for the ConAgra Hawai'i Bowl on Christmas Day — some in the WAC have preferred to call it a "blowing off" of responsibility — it set itself up for the kind of headaches it experienced with yesterday's 90-minute hearing before its fellow members.

Except for the embarrassment it has taken in front of its peers, UH will likely get off fairly easy. It might receive a reprimand once the WAC's Board of Directors approves the recommendation of the WAC Council.

Had UH beaten Tulane — and if reports of it having used an ineligible player are true — then the Warriors would have had to forfeit the game.

But it never should have come to any of this. While the end of the fall semester on Dec. 20 and the game five days later gave UH a narrow window to work within, it wasn't as if it was a surprise. The certification rule is one UH played a part in enacting, one it has realized the possible ramifications of since last summer and one it was advised to seek a waiver from at least six weeks before the bowl. Yet, it never did.

The certification rule is one worth having, even if its application requires some tweaking. It requires schools to certify that their players have passed at least six units in the most recent term, which at UH basically means a D-minus or better in two classes.

It is similar to rules in the Big 12 and Southeastern Conference and is intended to ensure that athletes, particularly seniors in their final season of eligibility, at least show up for classes. In the past, too many haven't.

At UH, where a seemingly innocuous TV commercial once led to the kind of debilitating NCAA probation that required nearly two decades for the basketball team to recover from, they have reason to know better than most that you should take every rule seriously.