HONOLULU (KHON2) — Embers from the ashes of Craig Angelos’ tenure as Director of Athletics at the University of Hawaii continue to be stoked by fans and student-athletes Wednesday hours after his surprising official ouster by outgoing UH President David Lassner.
Athletes and fans have taken to a petition on change.org and vowed to flood Thursday’s UH Board of Regents meeting with support for Angelos.
“All I can do is tell you that when I was a regent, I headed the athletic committee, and I proposed and it was adopted new rules that the regents would stay out of athletics,” Portnoy said. “If you look back at history and athletics and the regents getting involved in things they never should have gotten into and the controversies of who to hire as a coach and et cetera, et cetera, we passed rules that, except for rare situations, for example, if a contract exceeded a number of years or the salary exceeded a salary range, the regents would stay out of the athletic business. I hope they haven’t changed that rule since I’ve been gone because if they have, it’s a terrible decision. One of the primary responsibilities of a university chancellor, if we had one and we don’t, or a university president is the hiring and firing of an athletic director. To let the board of regents get involved is a very bad situation in my opinion and we had done away with it. I hope nothing comes of it tomorrow. Regardless of how the public feels, you gauge the president and this president fired this guy right before he leaves. I don’t think there’s anything anybody can do.”
Angelos was an at-will employee and not under contract with the university.
“Why he agreed to enter into the job without a contract, you’ll have to ask have to ask him,” Portnoy said. “Then there’s the issue of why did the president do this on his last few weeks on the job and leave a legacy that has become so controversial in the last 48 hours? Why didn’t he leave it to the new president? People tell me that he did not want to leave this issue to the new president because of exactly the reaction it’s getting and he thought that it was the right thing to do for him to make this decision at this time. I think the bottom line, though, Sam, is it’s not good.”
Associate Athletic Director Lois Manin will function as the interim Athletics Director once Angelos leaves on December 1.
UH says an announcement about a future search will be made by incoming UH President Wendy Hensel after the new year. Portnoy said whoever takes over has a tall mountain to climb as many sports enter a new conference and the college athletics world moves to a more professional model.
“How does the University of Hawaii, with its minuscule athletic budget, no stadium, et cetera, et cetera. How can they compete externally? Craig did some good things. He got the university into the Mountain West in all sports. We’ll see how that works out, but we’re still talking about a very difficult situation, a very limited budget. The legislature never funds the athletic department to the extent that it needs to be funded to be a competitive Division I football program. Just look at the results. That’s not a criticism of coaches. It’s a reality of economics. So there’s a lot to be done. Can Lois do it? She’s been involved internally for a long time, but I don’t know what kind of experience she has externally. And I think the real problem is it just seems to be turmoil within the department and how successful can you be in my job or in your job if everybody around you is plotting to get rid of you? It’s almost like a Shakespearean play.”