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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Tuesday, March 8, 2005

Frazier's ties to ASU run deep

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

Will the last one out of the University of Hawai'i-Manoa athletic department please turn off the lights?

Now that offensive line coach Mike Cavanaugh is splitting for Oregon State; athletic director Herman Frazier's name is popping up in speculation about the opening at Arizona State; and defensive line coach Vantz Singletary interviewed (but did not get) an assistant's position with the San Francisco 49ers, maybe it is time to take a head count up there.

With Frazier, however, the question isn't so much whether he would go — you have to believe he would take it faster than you could say "Valley of the Sun" — but does he get the offer?

His classic non-denial response to questions about interest in the ASU opening says that much loud and clear. Frazier said: "I have no comment on speculation about any job. I am the athletic director at the University of Hawai'i. That's all I have to say."

There's enough wiggle room in that statement to parade the UH marching band through. It tells us that Frazier relishes his name being linked to the opening but he isn't about to burn any $210,000-a-year bridges here in the meantime.

ASU is Frazier's dream job, especially since the U.S. Olympic Committee doesn't figure to offer up its top spot anytime soon. It is his alma mater, a place where he spent half his life. He's gone from an undergrad political science student and track star to senior associate athletic director before leaving in 2000. He's more than part of the family there, he's someone they point to as a distinguished alumnus. When he owned a restaurant/bar adjacent to the campus, it was known, simply, as 'Herman's."

What's more, ASU is an athletic program with a $35 million budget and its own football stadium, compared with UH, which has been running a deficit in trying to get to $20 million and rents a place for its football team to play.

Frazier has already taken two swings at the AD's chair: 1996, which was something of a longshot for a 41-year-old associate athletic director, and the big one, in 2000, as senior associate AD.

When he was passed over the second time for Gene Smith of Iowa State, who is now off to Ohio State, Frazier took the hint and went in search of an AD job so when the next opening came nobody could say he didn't have experience. That took him to Alabama-Birmingham and, in 2002, UH.

In the meantime, however, ASU has hired another president, Michael Crow, whose public pronouncements and preceding hires suggest looking far beyond the Sun Devil family. Crow wants to create, as he is fond of saying, the "New American University" and is stretching the hiring frontiers to staff his pursuit of it.

While it remains to be seen if Frazier will get the call from ASU, there should be no doubt what the answer will be should it come.

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