You could say Bob Hogue has a personal history with abandonment, and that comes as good news for anyone concerned about the future of the four Hawaii schools in the Pacific West Conference.
In another two years, the conference with a revolving door past for the three remaining (BYU-Hawaii drops athletics at the end of the current scholastic year) schools from the state will drop from 14 to 12 member institutions. The natural concern, that the three schools left will have their concerns diminished is understandable, given the PWC’s history with its member institutions.
Not to worry, says Hogue, the former Republican state senator from Oahu who became the conference’s commissioner 10 years ago after losing an election to Mazie Hirono for the U.S. Congress in Hawaii’s 2nd congressional district. He was in Hilo over the weekend to present a diversity award to the UHH athletic department and he set aside some time to discuss the big picture perspective for the days ahead.
After that defeat, Hogue, who had coached, written a book and done broadcasting about sports, abandoned politics and got back to his first love, athletics.
“I left politics behind me,” he said. “Maybe that’s why I seem happier.”
Then came another form of abandonment.
When he was named commissioner, the Hawaii schools had just survived a one-year waiver to compete as independent institutions. The original PWC came undone when schools from Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California turned away from paradise to form the Great Northwest Athletic Conference. Then, Montana State-Billings and Western New Mexico moved out and the four Hawaii schools were orphaned.
In came Hogue, after Grand Canyon and Notre Dame de Namur had been granted admission, making a six-school conference, which, at the time, was the minimum allowable number of teams necessary to form a conference.
A lot has changed since then and Hogue makes a convincing argument that those days of orphaning the Hawaii schools are a thing of the past.
“Absolutely none,” he said, when asked about the chances of another abandonment of UHH, Chaminade and Hawaii Pacific. “We had some very stabilizing legislation in Division II that virtually guarantees more stability than we have seen in recent years.”
Specifically, NCAA rules makers advanced the number of schools required to form a conference from six to 10, meaning that any parties seeking a new consolidation of schools would have to pry at least 10 of them from present locations in the PWC, GNAC or California Collegiate Athletic Association.
Nothing is impossible, but a major disruption of the three Division II conferences on the West Coast is about as close as you can get to an inoperable expansion.
That’s good news for the Hawaii schools, with the opportunity for more reasonable scheduling in the near future when the conference drops to 12 teams. Biola, yet another private religious school whose finances and funding of scholarships are legally undiscoverable — only UHH, the lone public school, has its books open for view — will join the conference next season, with BYU-Hawaii closing athletics altogether. Then Cal Baptist will make its move to Division I and Dixie State heads to the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference.
In this case, smaller should be better for the Vulcans, at the very least, in basketball where a complete round robin schedule — 22 games in all, home and away with the other 11 schools — seems to be in the works.
A conference call this week with athletic directors looking ahead at schedules could confirm basketball scheduling and provide a hint at future directions for the dozen member institutions.
“It’s a tricky kind of thing because everyone has travel contingencies to consider,” Hogue said, “and I suppose it’s possible we could stay at a 20-game (basketball) schedule, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see the double round robin.”
That would be good news for Hawaii Hilo, which has been the recipient of a variety of bad scheduling, seemingly, more often than not. Twelve is a better number for balanced scheduling, but it doesn’t work in all sports.
The PWC isn’t set up to go to double round robin in soccer, for example, where teams play an awkwardly unbalanced 13-game schedule. Softball, which plays double headers, would have a 44-game schedule in a double round robin, too much in a 50-game season.
“My first conversation with Pat (Guillen, UHH athletic director, hired just prior to the start of the 2015-16 school year), was one we both remember,” Hogue said. “Pat had been at (Cal State) Dominguez Hills and when he got the job (at UHH) I told him, ‘You know a lot about scheduling, but everything you ever learned about scheduling, you need to forget, none of it figures in this conference.’
“You want it to be absolutely equal for all concerned,” Hogue said, “but that is simply not possible given our schedule restrictions and travel demands. All we can do is the best we can.”
Sometimes “the best we can” is a wild miss. The Vulcans’ softball team this season has a 44-game schedule (reduced by the loss of two rainouts last week), that includes two season opening tournaments — now in the past — followed by 22 days of enforced idleness. No games at all have been scheduled until March 4 when a veritable murderer’s row of top PWC teams, all that played competitive games while the Vulcans were forced to practice among themselves, come rolling in to Hilo.
Softball is the most successful program in the athletic department and the league gave the squad seven home dates and 14 home games in conference play, around a 22-day layoff at the exact point teams need to build up for conference play.
As challenging as it is to envision a more unfair schedule, Hogue is an optimist for Hawaii Hilo athletics.
“Softball got off to a great start (3-2) in the Desert Stinger,” he said, “and that’s going to be a tough team for anyone to beat.
“At the same time, basketball has had success and might be close to that level again; volleyball has clearly had success and is positioned in a place where it can get back to that level.”
It’s his job as commissioner to tell all the member institutions good things and blow wide smiles in their directions, so you understand he is always encouraging and optimistic about the brand he promotes.
But the best news of all for the University of Hawaii at Hilo is that its place in Division II athletics seems secure, the threat of abandonment is irrational.
The goal, as it should be, is how best to compete at a high level in a conference that isn’t going anywhere.
