The road ahead in the home for the Big Island’s NCAA representative, UH-Hilo looks a bit overcast these days. ADVERTISING The road ahead in the home for the Big Island’s NCAA representative, UH-Hilo looks a bit overcast these days. Are
The road ahead in the home for the Big Island’s NCAA representative, UH-Hilo looks a bit overcast these days.
Are those serious storm clouds forming or is it just another passing shower?
The concerns are obvious. The longterm future for state schools in the PacWest is a pertinent subject and it will probably be one of those topics clinging to the schools likes barnacles on a boat. In the NCAA, the cartel that runs college athletics in our country, power politics are central to the mission to control college students.
When BYU-Hawaii shutters its athletic department at the end of the spring sports season, there will be three remaining state schools in the 14-school conference, Chaminade and Hawaii Pacific on Oahu and UH-Hilo here on the Big Island.
When your investment in the larger franchise is reduced in numbers, when voices calling for inclusion and reasonable travel dates is diminished from nearly 30 percent of the conference, (4 of 14 schools) to barely more than 21 percent, what happens? Can travel schedules for Hawaii schools get even worse than there are now? Will there be no discernible impact of any kind with the mainland schools seeking “travel efficiencies?”
That last phrase came from Dixie State University, already an affiliate member of the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference, with full separation from the PWC taking place in another year for the start of the 2018 fall season. At that point, the RMAC will be a 16-school conference, while the PWC will remain at 14, with Biola, another private religious school, taking the place of DSU.
In the RMAC, dues are $16,200 a year, according to the St. George (Utah) Spectrum, while the annual fee in the PWC is listed at $27,500.
“(The RMAC) is a highly competitive program,” Dixie State board of trustees chair David Clark told the Spectrum. “We’ll be looking more east instead of west for most of our games.”
Financially, why wouldn’t they? Accountants push pencils, come up with ways to save budget money, present said items to people with the leverage to change things and, given the exigencies of costs in Division II athletics, it’s not often schools opt for more expense when there’s another viable option.
“Don’t worry about it,” UH-Hilo athletic director Pat Guillen said last week in a phone interview from Nashville, Tenn., where he was attending an NCAA conference, “we are in no jeopardy in Hawaii and I say that confidently. You might find some administrators somewhere who think the lure and the appeal of the Hawaii schools may have worn off, but that’s not the consensus, not at all.”
That sounds reassuring, but for the sake of discussion, if the desires of the 11 mainland schools bend toward their own ease of travel, we might see convulsive schedules with big gaps in games followed by concentrated weeks of games squeezed together.
Oh wait, we already have that. Take a look at the schedule the conference delivered to Vulcans softball for 2017, the most competitively successful program at the University.
It might be the worst schedule ever faced by the softball program at UH-Hilo. The Vulcans open the season as in the past at the Desert Stinger Tournament in Nevada, with six games, followed by five more in the Dixie State Classic.
Those 11 games should get them prepared for the challenge of the conference season, but as soon as that last game is complete on February 11, the Vulcans have 21 days off, no outside competition at all. Following three weeks of inactivity, UH Hilo plays host to Concordia — expected to be among the top teams in the conference — for back-to-back doubleheaders.
In the time UH-Hilo players are scrimmaging among themselves for 21 days, Concordia will play 20 actual games, including four conference games.
No word on the speculation that when they show up after the extended break to play a well-prepared team, the Vulcans will be asked to back up against a wall, offered a cigarette to go with the blindfold.
The schedule is brutal, completely unfair to UH-Hilo, and, apparently, all a part of the PWC routine.
“It’s a very tough thing to schedule in the conference,” said Guillen, a member of the PWC scheduling committee. “It’s an inequitable schedule given the number of teams, the number of games and the time frame we have to work in.
“Every year,” he said, “someone gets the short end of the stick. This year, we got the short end of the stick, unfortunately.”
Schedules are made a year in advance, so Guillen wasn’t part of the planning for this season’s schedule and since he’s been here for more than a year, he’s been unable to find any games for the Vulcans in their 21-day layoff. The message seems to be to tough it out, maybe it will be better next year.
Guillen’s optimism that these kind of schedules won’t become more common for the reduced number of state schools is centered on his belief in the magical lure of the islands.
“First of all, athletes from the mainland love to come here,” he said, “and (mainland) coaches recruit players, in part, because they will be traveling to Hawaii on a regular basis.
“Does it save money not to go to Hawaii?” he said. “Well, of course, but that impacts the competitive experience for the student-athletes and that’s why we are all here, for the student-athletes.”
Reasonable people can disagree, but the history of the NCAA’s creation and use of the term “student-athlete” in the 1950s is contemptible, and that’s being gracious.
The term was created by lawyers for Walter Byers, the original director of the cartel. It was and it still being used in courts to deny liability coverage for seriously harmed students, disabled after competing in college sports. At it outset, the NCAA convinced court that “student-athletes” have no standing and are owed nothing other than brief coverage in such cases as players being permanently paralyzed from a football accident.
More recently, the NCAA has fought and so far won lawsuits against players whose images the cartel uses to reap video game profits. To date, courts have rule the players are due nothing, have no opportunity to receive the financial benefits taken by the NCAA off those student’s athletic activities.
The NCAA is no friend to students, especially athletes as a result of the confection they invented that was intended to convey a certain academic dignity that has some precedence over athletic pursuits.
This is not to claim Guillen is wrong to suggest the interest of college athletes is considered in any PacWest decision. The question is more about the leverage state schools have.
Will the three remaining state schools have the same voice that they have had with four? What if there were only two? What if there were only UH-Hilo, the only public school in the conference?
Let’s assume the conference still sees value in the Hawaii schools and let’s assume schedules like the one UHH softball received is only a glitch, an oddity not to be repeated.
Starting next season when the Hawaii contingent in the conference is officially reduced, what we hear from ADs and the conference will be less important than what we see them do.
Let’s keep focused on what the conference does, not what some of its members, however well intentioned, may say.
Contact Bart at barttribuneherald@gmail.com
