1st and 10 with Jim Donovan (7/6)

[Scott]

You can start listing your questions here, the chat will start at 10:00 AM this morning. Happy Belated 4th everyone!

[Scott]

Question from Sportsbow

Hi Mr. Donovan.

I have a Aloha Stadium question for you. I had a short discussion with one of the posters here on sportshawaii.com.

The question is, are fans allowed to bring in one bottle of water each into the Aloha Stadium? He said that they did it 2 times last year with no problem when going through security search. This is the first time I heard of this. Just want to verify this with you.

Here's the link to that discussion: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=31378
(Read the last 3 post.)

Thanks

[Scott]

Aloha Jim, just wanted to ask if you have any updates or news on upcoming events that you would like to share with the Sports Hawaii Ohana. Also, if there are any events, fundraisers, clinics, or any information that you would like to get out to the public, please let me know so we can help you get the message out. I'm not sure if each sport, band, Spirit squad, etc takes care of promoting their events individually or if it all goes through your marketing department. Just let us know how we can help. Thank you!

[krazychinaman]

Is it true that aloha stadium is getting green sit?....and just out of the blue what was your favorite MJ song...

[SunTzuWarrior]

If you dont make the Centurions list are you going to ban the starbulletin from all UH events? Just joking bruddah Jim, I just wanted to know if you feel that Hawaii's national exposure on TV will be the same, less or more now that JJ is gone and I know that the WAC's relationship with ESPN is a lot better now, is this also the case with Hawaii? Mahalos.

[Scott]

Aloha and welcome Jim thank you once again for joining us. I hope you had an awesome 4th of July, the 2009-2010 football season is almost upon us and I can just feel the excitement and electricity growing! GO WARRIORS!!!

[Jim Donovan]

Question from Sportsbow

Hi Mr. Donovan.

I have a Aloha Stadium question for you. I had a short discussion with one of the posters here on sportshawaii.com.

The question is, are fans allowed to bring in one bottle of water each into the Aloha Stadium? He said that they did it 2 times last year with no problem when going through security search. This is the first time I heard of this. Just want to verify this with you.

Here's the link to that discussion: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=31378
(Read the last 3 post.)

Thanks

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sportsbow –

Aloha Stadium sets the policies for their venue. As I understand it, currently no outside food and beverages may be brought into the Stadium. This is due to their food and beverage contract, similar to our venues here on campus.

I just had my staff contact Aloha Stadium management and they reaffirmed that no outside food or beverage is supposed to be allowed into the Stadium. If you have any other questions or concerns regarding this policy, you should address them with the Stadium management. Thanks for your support!

[uhwarriors]

Jim,

Where are we with football season ticket sales now and where do you hope to be by the start of the season?

[SunTzuWarrior]

Question from Sportsbow

Hi Mr. Donovan.

I have a Aloha Stadium question for you. I had a short discussion with one of the posters here on sportshawaii.com.

The question is, are fans allowed to bring in one bottle of water each into the Aloha Stadium? He said that they did it 2 times last year with no problem when going through security search. This is the first time I heard of this. Just want to verify this with you.

Here's the link to that discussion: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=31378
(Read the last 3 post.)

Thanks

Da problem with that is 1 bottle of water can equal to 1 bottle of Rum or Vodka!

[Jim Donovan]

Aloha Jim, just wanted to ask if you have any updates or news on upcoming events that you would like to share with the Sports Hawaii Ohana. Also, if there are any events, fundraisers, clinics, or any information that you would like to get out to the public, please let me know so we can help you get the message out. I'm not sure if each sport, band, Spirit squad, etc takes care of promoting their events individually or if it all goes through your marketing department. Just let us know how we can help. Thank you!

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Scott –

Thanks for asking! Yes, even though it’s summer, there are still many ways to help support us. Football season tickets for new season ticket holders went on sale this morning for the general public. Women’s volleyball season tickets for new season ticket holders go on sale on July 27th. If you’re not a season ticket holder yet, now’s your chance.

Various sports are still running summer camps – baseball, soccer, and men’s and women’s volleyball. Their camp information can be found by going to our website (hawaiiathletics.com) and clicking on the “Camps” link.

Don Murphy of Murphy’s Bar & Grill will be hosting a welcome event for new head coaches Charlie Wade and Dana Takahara-Dias on July 16th in the evening. Come on out to meet/welcome the coaches and show your support for their programs. Then, Don hosts the annual Pigskin Pigout on the evening of August 20th. It’s always a great time and Don has been such a loyal supporter and huge help to UH Athletics. We are so grateful for and appreciative of all he does for us.

The UH Letterwinners Club will be hosting a “Behind-the-Scenes” look at UH Athletics on September 12th. It includes a tour of the different UH Athletics facilities, meeting various coaches and student-athletes and watching the telecast of the UH vs. Washington State football game and/or the live home game of UH vs. Stanford wahine volleyball. Here’s the link to the flyer for more information: http://www.hawaiiathletics.com/document ... pdf?id=638

In addition, the UH Letterwinners Club will be hosting a golf tournament at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, NV in conjunction with the UH vs. UNLV football game. The tournament is on September 18th. Here’s the link to the flyer for more information:
http://www.hawaiiathletics.com/document ... pdf?id=550

The UH Athletics Department will be hosting its annual golf tournament at the Royal Vista Golf Club in Walnut, CA on September 16th. This event is hosted by some loyal mainland supporters and has generated on average $15,000-$20,000 a year for the department for the past 10+ years. For more information, please call Alvin Katahara at 956-7301.

There are two other concepts that we are discussing may come to fruition. The first is a fundraiser to celebrate Coach Dave Shoji’s 1000th win which we anticipate will happen this season. While the concept isn’t set in stone, we are toying with the idea of trying to get 1000 individuals to donate $100 each (minimum) into an endowment account for wahine volleyball. If we move forward with this fundraiser, we’d start promoting it in August and having some kind of visual gauge of the collections displayed near the entrance of the Stan Sheriff Center.

The second concept is a dinner the week of the Wisconsin game to celebrate UH football’s 100th anniversary. Again, we were thinking about trying to raise a net $100,000 from this dinner to support Na Koa, the UH football booster club.

We will continue to discuss both of these concepts, and if approved, you will start seeing information on them probably sometime in August/September timeframe.

Lastly, I know times are tough out there for everyone concerned, but if you are able to make a donation to support your favorite sport, scholarships, summer school or the athletic department in general, you can do so by going to: http://www.koaanuenue.org/ways_give.shtml

Finally, I just wanted to thank everyone for their support!

[wilderstreet]

In Ferd Lewis' article last week he showed that women's basketball had the biggest loss with over $1M in losses. This amounts to nearly 40% of the $2.58M loss for the department. What is being done to fix this situation?

[Garret]

Jim,

I'm concerned about the Road Warrior program, where $50 only gets the right to buy 4 tickets to a road game (with a $10 surcharge per ticket). It seems like that makes it a lot cheaper to get tickets to road games through the host school (like how Rich got 220 tickets for the UNLV game this year). Since road tickets normally do not seem to sell out, is it possible to examine either decreasing the Road Warrior fee or increasing the number of road tickets (maybe to 8 ) that may be purchased for a road game?

[Jim Donovan]

Is it true that aloha stadium is getting green sit?....and just out of the blue what was your favorite MJ song...

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krazychinaman -

I had a chance to talk with Aloha Stadium management and much of the refurbishment is going to be completed with green paint -- so over time I think most of the "rust color" will be replaced with green. I think this is pretty cool as it will make the Stadium feel even more like our home stadium because no matter how many colors are associated with us now, green is the most dominant.

Well, since I'm old enough, I actually remember MJ when he was with the Jackson 5, and my favorite song from that era was "I'll Be There". From his more recent career as a solo artist, I like "Man in the Mirror" and "Thriller", but "Billie Jean" is the one that always sticks in my head. As I'm sure everyone agrees, we lost MJ way too soon....

[Jim Donovan]

If you dont make the Centurions list are you going to ban the starbulletin from all UH events? Just joking bruddah Jim, I just wanted to know if you feel that Hawaii's national exposure on TV will be the same, less or more now that JJ is gone and I know that the WAC's relationship with ESPN is a lot better now, is this also the case with Hawaii? Mahalos.

--------------------------------------------------------------

SunTzuWarrior -

First of all, I think the idea of the Centurions that the Star Bulletin is doing is very cool. I never expected to be in the top 100 -- I'm just proud I had the opportunity to be a Rainbow Warrior. Considering the fact that we've got probably in the neighborhood of 2,000 former UH football players, it's a real honor to be chosen as one of the top 100 players. I take some solace in knowing that if someone ranked the top teams over the years, the 1981 team I started at right guard for (that ended with a 9-2 record) would likely make the top 10.

As far as national television exposure on ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU, my best guess is we'll get 2-4 games shown annually. A large part of how many games are shown on national tv has to do with your overall win-loss record. If we continue to have winning seasons, it will be closer to 4 games a year -- and then another time when we play in the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl or a BCS bowl.

[Jim Donovan]

Jim,

Where are we with football season ticket sales now and where do you hope to be by the start of the season?

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uhwarriors -

Last year we had about 27,700 season tickets sold when we kicked off our first game. Based on the renewals as of the end of June, we are about 80% of the accounts renewed and 81% of the tickets renewed (not counting the student tickets). Prior to today -- the first day of sales for new season tickets -- we had deposits from about 200 individuals for new season tickets (this should translate roughly into about 500 new season tickets being sold). My best guess at this point will be that we end up selling between 23,000-24,000 season tickets for this year.

While this decline is not unexpected because of the downturn in the economy, I'm still hopeful that individual game ticket sales will be better than average because we have Boise State, Fresno State, Navy and Wisconsin on our home schedule. Overall, having good single game and walk-up sales can raise our revenue substantially especially in light of the fact that season ticket holders receive about a 20% discount per game when they purchase a season ticket package.

There's still a lot of dynamics involved between now and December regarding our overall sales and revenues -- the two biggest being our win-loss record and if any type of economic recovery begins on a nationwide basis. Just like everyone else, we're going to have to wait and see how this all plays out.....