A few local sports thoughts for 2014
What are your sports hopes and expectations for 2014?
Here are a few of mine:
1. That Norm Chow realizes how important it is to have at least one assistant coach on staff who was a player and student at the school you are trying to recruit to. With the release of Tony Tuioti, there is no regular coaching staff member who played for UH. Lance Samuseva and Richard Torres should get strong consideration as hires for the defensive staff opening. Neither played linebacker, which is where the opening is, so that could be seen as a stumbling block for hiring them unless some juggling can be done. By the way, I’ve heard there may be more changes.
2. That whoever is hired as new defensive coordinator is capable of becoming at least interim head coach if necessary. If Hawaii starts out 1-5 or 0-6 in 2014 the head coach should be replaced at midseason.
3. Better attendance for a deserving UH basketball team.
As was mentioned in today’s column, in its next TV negotiation UH should give itself the leeway to NOT televise events live if it will significantly hurt attendance. This can be worked out fairly easily for the arena sports with compensation for the TV partner if it loses a live event.
4. That Kolten Wong has a strong rookie year for the St. Louis Cardinals. It should be noted that the second base job is not necessarily his to lose, as the Cardinals recently picked up capable veteran Mark Ellis. But Wong is still the second-sacker of the future, if not the present.
5.. That the OIA and ILH merge for football. Three divisions. This way Kamehameha, Saint Louis and Punahou can play appropriate competition during the regular season — teams like Kahuku, Mililani, Farrington. The two-division model is not working. There are too many mismatches and forfeits.
6. That there will be real progress on when and where a new stadium will be built.
2. Would be interesting to see if Chow would be willing to hire a head coach in waiting since over the past two years his hires generally have little coaching experience.
5. In general the three divisions will be the haves (ILH), the wanna haves (OIA Red) the the have nots (OIA White). This is what caused the split forty years ago and not much has changed except you may have Randal Okimoto complain about the OIA wanna haves trying to emulate the ILH in order to be competitive.
Good stuff Dave. When you say more changes–do you mean more firing and hiring or do you mean repositioning coaches to different positions?
Wow Dave!
Your 1st blog of the new year and it’s spot on! The drama at lower campus continues to evolve. Interesting thought regarding the Defensive DC position taking over in case Chow falters. So does that mean Ben Jay will have a bigger say on that hire? As far as coach(s) leaving, has to be to go to another program verses firing I would think.
Merging OIA/ILH is long over due. It would bring more excitement snd additional fans to the stadium.
Stop being so Oahu centric. There are many UH fans on the Neighbor Islands whose only connection and opportunity to watch sports come thru local TV broadcasts. Oahuans are spoiled sports fans who only support our teams if the mood strikes them, if the weather is perfect, AND THEY WIN!!!!!!!!!!!! UH lost a huge potential fan base by charging Neighbor Island fans pay-for-view fees. Now you want blackouts – come on!
I seem to recall that the current OIA and ILH schools were in the same league before. Are the issues that led to their split still in existence?
It’ll take a number of years, but one possible issue, that of private schools having older students, will go away.
Need to review how the SSC box office ticket sales is being managed. It is important that the occasional fans have a good experience when they do attend games. Like not selling less desirable seats when better seats are available might be a good start. A good experience only encourages these fans to attend more frequently. Complaining about smaller crowds is akin to peeing into the wind. Look to see how the experience can be improved.
4. People on all islands act like live UH sports on TV is an inalienable right. So, no, I’m not Oahu-centric. When the crowds come, then everyone gets live TV. Works for the NFL.
5. Yes, issues of childishness and arrogance still there … but change could be forced if the Governor is serious when he says he considers this an important issue.
6. Yes, logistics can always be improved. But I still believe the live TV is the main thing holding back the crowds.