UH turning to boosters for help

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Writer

When University of Hawai'i football season ticket holders receive their renewal notices in April, they may find a rising schedule of mandatory fees to keep those seats as the school looks to boosters to underwrite a larger portion of the athletic department budget.

Herman Frazier acknowledges raising mandatory fees is "a tough call," but says if UH can boost its budget by $4 million it will "make us damn competitive." Advertiser library photo • Aug. 1, 2002

Memorandums of understanding are being concluded that are intended to broaden the membership of 'Ahahui Koa Anuenue, UH's oldest and largest athletic booster organization, and change the way it and the athletic department do business.

Under terms of the agreements, according to people with knowledge of the plans, the athletic department will turn over prime ticket and parking functions to the 35-year-old "Society of the Rainbow Warrior" for its events at Aloha Stadium, the Stan Sheriff Center and Les Murakami Stadium. Season ticket holders who might have bought through other booster groups in the past will increasingly go through Koa Anuenue, which will be the umbrella group for all sports booster clubs.

In return, Koa Anuenue, which is advertising to hire an executive director, will receive the help of a UH Foundation development officer. The foundation will manage all Koa Anuenue funds — for which it will receive a 2 percent fee — but money will be dispensed at the discretion of the athletic director.

UH fans will still be able to donate money to their favorite sport, according to Nathan Goldstein of the UH Foundation.

Fees may rise over five years

Last summer the regents approved a doubling of fees to $25 and $50 in football. Season ticket holders in prime locations at Aloha Stadium pay the premium fee on top of the $117-$135 face value of each season ticket.

UH officials have not said how much of a hike they will be seeking for the upcoming season and beyond, but there has been widespread talk of a five-year period in which prices would be brought in line with the $300 that Koa Anuenue members have been paying since 1991.

Paying price for good seats

Athletic director Herman Frazier, who will be responsible for taking a recommendation to the administration, said UH needs to raise its $16 million budget to $20 million soon if it wants to grow and remain competitive.

Booster-generated money, which account for 20- to 30-percent of the athletic budget at many marquee schools, have long been viewed as an underutilized resource at UH, which receives less than $2 million from its various groups, about 12 percent of last year's budget.

Koa Anuenue, which has been providing money for scholarships, has provided as much as $1 million a year to the athletic department, officials said.

Frazier said UH is a late-comer to premium seating. "Fresno State has been doing it (for) 20 years. I was selling $500 premium seats (at Arizona State) in the '70s. If you were on the 50-yard line in the loge, you paid $500 in the '70s. Now, some of those people are paying $3 grand and $4 grand."

Frazier acknowledged that raising the level of mandatory fees at UH, "is a tough call, but I think people here like winning as well. And when you taste some of that, it can be fun and it can be nice."

Long-time fan Rodney Okai said: "I'm a die-hard fan so I would probably pay whatever the increase is as long as they don't show the games live on TV for free. They should black them out or just show them on pay-per-view unless they are sold out. We want to see UH get better and they ask us to pay more, but we shouldn't have to subsidize it for the people who don't pay anything."

What about long-time fans?

Another fan, whose ownership of season tickets predates the move to Aloha Stadium in 1976 and are included in a family trust, said he hopes UH will take into consideration the number of retired and soon-to-be retired supporters who live on fixed incomes. The fan, who asked that his name not be used, said, "We're staunch supporters and realize the school needs the money to hire good coaches, but after all these years of support in good times and bad, we'd like to be considered, too."

Another season ticket holder said she believes "long-time fans should be offered a discount based upon how many years they've had their season tickets. Like, so much off for 30 years, 20 years ..."

Burns gets in game

Koa Anuenue was started by Gov. John Burns to support a then-college division athletic program that had designs on Division IA membership. Legend has it that Burns walked out of a game, one in a series of one-sided UH losses, vowing that the school would either do what it took to be competitive or it wouldn't play at all.

His administrative assistant, Dan Aoki, rounded up a handful of well-heeled boosters to help pay for the program in 1967. But as athletics evolved from a handful of sports, most created their own booster groups and, with independence, ticket policies varied by sport. Without additional blocks of seats in the most desirable locations, Koa Anuenue was unable to expand its membership.

As a disgruntled potential donor told one Koa Anuenue official, "without good seats you don't have bleep."

In the 1990s, then-UH President Kenneth Mortimer initiated plans to bring various athletic booster groups — of which there were nearly a dozen separate ones — under one banner. His successor, Evan Dobelle, has mandated a streamlining of fund-raising under the UH Foundation.

$20 million is goal

Frazier said: "If I'm working at the University of Michigan, my budget is $58 million. If I'm working at the University of Texas, it is between $58 and $60 million. If I'm at the University of Hawai'i, it is $16 million.

"When June (Jones) and his troops line up to play those schools, I expect them to go beat 'em," Frazier said. "We don't need to be (at) $58 million, but we probably need to be at least $20 million. And, $20 million can be OK and we don't have to have all those other frills, but $4 million in this program can make us damn competitive."

Judge Jim Burns, son of the late governor and head of Koa Anuenue, said given UH's recent operating budgets, "I'm amazed at how successful we've been under the circumstances."