Dave Reardon: The latest UH AD situation is just a long list of clown shows

The family newspaper versions of what the acronyms FUBAR and SNAFU stand for are “Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition/Repair” and “Situation Normal, All Fouled Up.”

And that seems to be what almost every power transition involving sports at the University of Hawaii has been for a long time. Nothing can go smoothly and without controversy.

Forget who you think is right or wrong in the latest unintentional drama. UH President David Lassner’s firing of athletic director Craig Angelos – a man he hired 18 months ago – is just the latest in a long line of clown shows to take the stage whenever there are changes at AD or a senior coaching position at Manoa comes.

My earliest memories of UH sports have nothing to do with anything anyone did on a field or court. It’s about an awards banquet in 1973. I wasn’t there, but my work uncles in the Star-Bulletin sports department – Randy Cadiente, Paul Carvalho, Dick Couch, Jim Easterwood, Bill Kwon and others – told me all about it.

Of course, Red Rocha is not Angelos and Harlan Cleveland is not Lassner. But for at least the last 51 years, UH has made hiring and firing high-profile athletic department figures a sideline that angers its fan base and other stakeholders. And if you pay taxes in this state, you are a stakeholder. It seems that every time something like this gets messed up, it ends up costing us dearly in one way or another.

Carvalho, who later covered Rainbow sports and served as the Star-Bulletin’s sports editor, was a UH student in 1973 who had just started as a staffer at the paper.

He is now retired but still follows what is happening in Manoa.

“It seems like they never learn,” Carvalho said, adding that the firing of football coach Dave Holmes, also in the mid-70s, was also very strange. “Incompetence, I don’t know what you call it. They always take the very worst steps at the very worst times. I’m not saying Lassner didn’t have the right to make the move he did, but it’s the worst thing at the worst time. It sounds like a petty thing because (Angelos) made a big splash by announcing the move to the Mountain West.”

Paul is one of the most sincere people I know and he admits that he doesn’t know the story from every perspective. But I agree with him that the optics are bad – just like they were in 1973 when it was announced at the postseason banquet that Rocha would no longer be the basketball coach.

The Bows had a 15-11 record this season. But winning more games than losing wasn’t good enough; Rocha became a victim of his own success just a year after the legendary Fabulous Five, coached by Rocha, completed their two-year streak that electrified Hawaii basketball fans.

Since 1973, there have been so many other botched crossings that drew the public’s ire, some of which were trolls who were just dudes who lived under bridges and had no WiFi – so you can’t just blame the internet.

Some of the other low points: Basketball coach Riley Wallace was threatened with a “two-on-one” when he tried to stand up for football coach Bob Wagner in announcing his firing; Football coach Greg McMackin was allowed to “retire,” “donate” half of his million-dollar buyout, and pretend he wasn’t fired; and – my personal downside – a poorly written contract allowed fired basketball coach Gib Arnold to get paid for getting the program into trouble with the NCAA.

Which reminds me: Three years after Rocha was fired, the Bows were on NCAA probation.

In this area, poor personnel decisions and their poor implementation tend to lead to dire consequences.

The firings of Rocha and Angelos are both very strange. An article by Gene Hunter in the Honolulu Advertiser a week after Rocha’s reassignment provokes reflection on some similarities and differences.

Rocha was described as a pawn in a power struggle between Cleveland and the Board of Regents, Hunter wrote.

When Angelos was hired in May 2023, as you may recall, the regents expressed displeasure that Lassner gave them only one candidate, Angelos, to choose from. They eliminated a flawed process, and three of the 11 didn’t say “yes” in the final approval vote.

The state legislature was quiet this time, but some of the lawmakers in 1973 had a lot to say about what happened to Rocha.

State Rep. Jack Suwa said in Hunter’s article it was “very shady.”

Some of the regents threatened to fire Cleveland. One of them, Charles S. Ota, said the university was “a monster without a head.”

Nobody will fire Lassner. He is expected to retire at the end of next month.

“Maybe the new president should hire Angelos and give him a one-year contract,” Carvalho said.