The University of Hawai'i doesn't often acknowledge its mistakes in public under the glare of television lights. But yesterday it did, however roundabout and belatedly.

More than five years after it refused to even grant him an interview with its 16-member search committee, UH named Jim Donovan its athletic director.

Amid smiles and handshakes all around, a beaming Donovan was handed the keys to the state's only Division I-A athletics program by the Board of Regents.

He gets charge of its 19 sports and $26.6 million budget — and all that comes with it.

Included, if not hanging precariously over it, is a $4.2 million — or more — accumulated net deficit. Thrown in for good measure are aging and, in some cases, dilapidated facilities. Amid all the barely tethered hope yesterday was the question of whether UH would even be in this fine mess if Donovan, the one-time associate AD, had gotten an interview and the job in June of 2002.

Would June Jones still be here? Would UH teams have enjoyed wider success?

We'll never know, of course. But doubtlessly, they are thoughts Donovan has had countless opportunities to ponder from his position as executive director of the Sheraton Hawai'i Bowl, where he went months after being passed over by his alma mater. A place where he played football, met his wife and earned two degrees, one of them an MBA. "Home," he calls it.

It says a lot that he went quietly, honorably, when the process anointed Herman Frazier instead, all the time wishing "only the best for UH. That's all I've ever wanted, what was best for UH," Donovan has maintained all along.

Though he sometimes said it through clenched teeth when the deficits grew, football schedules went unfilled and a bowl ticket situation became messy. You swore you could see the sag in the shoulders of the one-time 6-foot-3, 250-pound offensive guard when UH — and the man who led it — became an easy and frequent punchline in the community.

In the interim, Donovan headed up the UH Letterwinners Club. He helped UH from his perch with the Hawai'i Bowl. He held season tickets and went to events. Heck, he would have volunteered for tackling dummy if anyone had asked.

All the while he mentally took notes on where UH was going. During his evening walks he would let his mind drift to fantasy and consider how he might run things if only he'd gotten the opportunity. One that, as the years passed, he had to come to fear he might not get a shot at again.

Coaches who had once bemoaned his budget-minded administration as associate AD for six years came to tell him how much he was missed — and needed.

So when he got an invitation to address the search committee for this hire, the 48-year-old Donovan was well prepared. He came armed not only with answers but with a life's dream and a passion to share. You suspect some of that showed through to Manoa Chancellor Virginia S. Hinshaw and the nine-member committee.

Friends say Donovan was so fearful of blowing what might be his best — and last — opportunity for the job that he even looked over his shoulder to make sure he wasn't being followed to the "secret" interview location at the Waikiki Beach Marriott.

Donovan tells a story about the first day of work after he left UH. Following nearly 20 years at UH as a student and employee, he recalls how, west-bound on H-1, he "began to take the UH off-ramp to school and, then, had to make a U-turn after that to get to my new office."

The error, we now know. really wasn't his. It was UH's.

It just took the school 5 1/2 years to rectify it with a U-turn of its own.

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