"I've ... had a number of private sector people turn to me and say, 'We now understand something we didn't get before: We understand the transformational power of Warrior football in this state.' "

— UH President David McClain to legislators last week

It was interesting to hear University of Hawai'i President David McClain tell legislators about the revelation that took place in the business community in the wake of the Warrior football's march to the Sugar Bowl.

And, in a way, it was sad, too.

That's because it should not be a new, eye-opening concept. Gov. John Burns preached the same thing in the 1960s when he led the charge for UH to have an intercollegiate athletic program and first proposed that the school join a conference. At a time when UH was just beginning to play an all-collegiate schedule, he pictured how the school could be a rallying point for the state.

Now, as UH prepares to start the search for a new athletic director, the school needs to seek out someone who both understands and can sell that vision. What it requires in Herman Frazier's successor is someone who can wade into the business community and, using 2007 an example, build a financial partnership to grow the entire athletic program.

That's something the former AD was either unwilling or unable to do. How lacking it became was underlined when a frustrated group of local businessmen, pledging $1,000 each on their own, raised more than $100,000 in a little more than a day last month to donate to the football program.

The new athletic director needs to do far better. For one thing, there is the $1.1 million salary the new coach, Greg McMackin, will be pulling down, plus raises for the assistants. There are facility upgrades pledged.

McClain has said McMackin's salary will be paid by "an indeterminate mix of university general funds, athletic department revolving funds and private donations." Jones' $800,016 salary was supposed to be a 50-50 split of revolving funds and donations.

Some of the approximately $2 million UH expects to realize from the Sugar Bowl after expenses could help but would be merely a short-term injection for an athletic program with a $26.7 million budget.

Heretofore athletics has received approximately $1.4 million in general funds, less than one percent of the money the state gives UH, and that has mostly been earmarked for operation of lower campus facilities. To grow, UH is going to require more and with so many areas elsewhere on campus lacking, it will be hard to justify diverting money from the school's foremost mission of education.

So, the new AD will have to be someone who can go out and raise it by selling Gov. Burns' vision to a business community made more receptive by the 2007 season.

Now that the message has finally been received after 40 years, let's hope the vision doesn't go unrealized any longer.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com.