Posted on: Wednesday, June 16, 2004

UH loses champion of athletics

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

When Evan Dobelle took over as president of the University of Hawai'i three years ago one of the first areas of the system to feel his imprint was athletics.

A series of statements and actions about athletics calculated to get him into the headlines and the public consciousness set the tone for his aggressive administration on several fronts.

And while his termination last night by a unanimous vote of the UH Board of Regents will send shockwaves throughout the 10-campus system and the state, UH-Manoa athletics, as much as any place, has ample reason to be concerned about what — and, indeed, who — will follow.

For it was Dobelle, more than any previous occupant of Bachman Hall, who embraced the state's only Division I-A athletic program from Day One of his administration.

It was Dobelle who not only dared but ordered the athletic department, its coaches and athletes, to dream big. Bigger than ever before. Bigger, perhaps, than the budget allowed for the moment, loosening the purse strings to raise salaries and budgets.

He could be a grandstander and, at times high-handed and arrogant, but you got the feeling he genuinely cared about athletics and its role in boosting the institution.

"I don't always agree with him," UH football coach June Jones once said, "but I like the way he thinks."

When the men's volleyball team won a national championship (since rescinded), Dobelle was there at courtside. When other UH teams went to postseason, he was usually there to lend support.

For that and other reasons, he found a solid following among coaches and fans. "He's the best president since I've been here by far," said Riley Wallace, the men's basketball coach of the past 14 seasons. "It's a bad move and a dark day for the University of Hawai'i."

Some of Wallace's sentiments were shared by other coaches last night, though they declined to be quoted.

Indeed, Dobelle was a vocal proponent of making Jones the state's highest-paid employee and raising salaries of other coaches and administrators.

Despite the formalities of a search committee, Dobelle's fingerprints were all over the selection of Herman Frazier as athletic director two years ago.

Unfortunately, they were also on the misadventure that was the courting of the Mountain West Conference and the decline of the Western Athletic Conference.

And you can bet the administration's underwriting of two years of an athletic department deficit had his blessing.

Now, as with their brethren on the rest of the campus, the athletic department is left to shake off the shock of his firing and wonder what — and who — comes next.

It can't be a comforting feeling.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.