January: 1st and 10 with Jim Donovan Thursday Jan 5th 10 AM

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January: 1st and 10 with Jim Donovan Thursday Jan 5th 10 AM

Post by Scott »

Jim Donovan will be chatting live from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM on Thursday January 5, 2012. If you can't be here then, please post your questions in this thread. One question at a time. Preference will be given to live questions but hopefully we should be able to have all questions answered.
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Scott
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Re: January: 1st and 10 with Jim Donovan Thursday Jan 5th 10

Post by Scott »

Once again please take this opportunity to share any news, events and/or activities that you would like to share with the Ohana! Thank you!
"Do, or do not. There is no 'try'."
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Re: January: 1st and 10 with Jim Donovan Thursday Jan 5th 10

Post by Small~Axe »

Happy New Years Jim,
Are you still looking for game 13 or are you content with the current schedule.
If so we could possibly have 2 byes in September, with the season opener against Lamar on 9/15
That's a lot of time in between for fans to wait to see the first two home games
If you are the big tree,
We are the small axe,
Ready to cut you down,
Sharpened to cut you down - Bob

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Re: January: 1st and 10 with Jim Donovan Thursday Jan 5th 10

Post by Grandpa »

Happy New Years Mr. Donovan! Can you share with us any interesting back-stories (back stage or behind the scenes) that happened during the selection of Coach Chow? Keep up the great work!

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Re: January: 1st and 10 with Jim Donovan Thursday Jan 5th 10

Post by Scott »

Great job on selecting the Warriors new head coach, Mr. Donovan. The Sports Hawaii Ohana can really appreciate all of the hard work that you and your staff put into it. Now that it is over, could you elaborate on what were the biggest hurdles in the selection process?
"Do, or do not. There is no 'try'."
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Re: January: 1st and 10 with Jim Donovan Thursday Jan 5th 10

Post by warriorfan_82 »

Aloha Jim,

Can you give us a status update on recent athletic facilities improvements, such as the TC Ching complex, and any other projects in the works?

Also, is there any resolution on the University of Hawaii's men's (Warriors, Rainbow Warriors & Rainbows) and women's (Rainbow Wahines & Wahines) nicknames for the 2012-2013 season?

Thank you for your time,

Go Warriors!!!

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Re: January: 1st and 10 with Jim Donovan Thursday Jan 5th 10

Post by Sportsbow »

Hi Jim and Happy New Year.

With all of this conference realignment going on, and with most of them having a conference championship game, plus some of them playing 9 conference games to go with the championship game, did you ever consider declaring a hardship on UH scheduling and asking the NCAA about adding an extra week at the beginning of the season for all teams in football and make it a 15 week regular season schedule? This will make it easier for all teams to schedule UH without losing one of their bye week. For those teams that don't play UH, they will have that extra bye week and it will make their scheduling much easier also. Teams that play at UH will still have 2 bye weeks in the regular season, while teams that don't play at UH will have 3 bye weeks, which they had originally before the NCAA allowed the 12th game for everyone.

With this current 14 week regular season schedule, most of the schools don't want to lose that bye week by playing an extra game and leave them with only one bye week in a season. Some of the teams were unable to schedule a 13th game when playing at UH because they either don't want to lose that bye week or, had a hard time finding teams to play them because of the same reason about losing a bye week.

The most important thing about adding an extra week to the schedule is that, it gives student athletes for all schools more time in classes during the regular season. If the NCAA really care about the student athletes education, they should consider adding this extra week to the season.

I hope you consider asking the NCAA this. Just look at the upcoming 2012 schedule. It seems like you're having a hard time in finding the 13th game. What I'm trying to say is, if you don't ask, then you will never know! No harm in trying.

Mahalo
Last edited by Sportsbow on Thu Jan 05, 2012 10:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: January: 1st and 10 with Jim Donovan Thursday Jan 5th 10

Post by eonatoa »

is this chat goin on right now? if so, where? i cant see anything!

my question for JD......... Please explain the reduction in the Football Head Coaches salary from over a million to 500,000.

Thanks!

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Re: January: 1st and 10 with Jim Donovan Thursday Jan 5th 10

Post by Jim Donovan »

Good morning and Happy New Year! Sorry, I'm a little late. I was working on some temporary housing issues for the new football coaches. Let's get started.

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Re: January: 1st and 10 with Jim Donovan Thursday Jan 5th 10

Post by Jim Donovan »

Small~Axe wrote:Happy New Years Jim,
Are you still looking for game 13 or are you content with the current schedule.
If so we could possibly have 2 byes in September, with the season opener against Lamar on 9/15
That's a lot of time in between for fans to wait to see the first two home games
----------------------------------------------

Small~Axe -

We're still taking a look at if it's economically feasible for us to play a 7th home game, which would be our 13th game this year. The Mountain West Conference would like to have all schools complete their schedules by the middle of this month, so we don't have much time left if this is going to become a reality. My guess is we'll probably only be playing 12 games (because we just won't be able to make it work economically). As far as two byes in September, that would really be up to the Mountain West Conference schedulers, as they could schedule a conference game in week 4 of the season (I think you're alluding to the fact that we would an open date in week 2 and week 4). That said, if we do have 2 byes in September, that might not be such a bad thing for us for next year only as we'll be converting from the run-and-shoot offense to Coach Chow's offense -- and the 2 bye weeks in September will give our players extra time to understand and master Coach Chow's offense.

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Re: January: 1st and 10 with Jim Donovan Thursday Jan 5th 10

Post by Jim Donovan »

Grandpa wrote:Happy New Years Mr. Donovan! Can you share with us any interesting back-stories (back stage or behind the scenes) that happened during the selection of Coach Chow? Keep up the great work!
[Scott] Great job on selecting the Warriors new head coach, Mr. Donovan. The Sports Hawaii Ohana can really appreciate all of the hard work that you and your staff put into it. Now that it is over, could you elaborate on what were the biggest hurdles in the selection process?

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

Grandpa and Scott -

I'm combining your questions because they're both so similar and they're regarding the head football coach selection process...

First off, I’d like to thank the search committee: Bert T. Kobayashi (chair), Rockne Freitas, Peter Ho, Duane Kurisu, Dr. Edison Miyawaki, and Jean E. Rolles. They really did a fantastic job working through the whole process and coming up with an excellent group of finalists.

As far as the process itself, I can’t go into tremendous detail, but I’ll try to explain the general details of how the search progressed. By University policy and I believe State policy, we had to advertise the position for a minimum of 5 working days before we could start reviewing applications. At the end of that period, we had more than 40 candidates that met the minimum qualifications – which were a college degree and a minimum of 5 years coaching football at the collegiate level (this would include junior college and four-year programs). In my opinion, that is a very good pool of potential candidates considering more than 40 applicants met this criteria (I guess I’m just a little amazed that so many coaches that had coached football for a minimum of 5 years at the collegiate level were seriously interested in this position).

The committee met and started the process of narrowing down the list of applicants that met the minimum qualifications to a manageable number that could be interviewed in person. One of the screening criteria used to narrow down the list of applicants was whether or not the applicant had multiple years as an offensive or defensive coordinator.

Once the pool was narrowed down to the number of applicants that were going to be interviewed, each of those applicants was invited to fly to Hawaii to interview in person (4 of the interviewees did fly in to interview and 1 conducted the interview via Skype). Once interviews were completed, the committee forwarded a list of finalists to be considered for the head coach position.

I then met with the University leadership team, and we discussed the finalists and Coach Chow was recommended to become the next head coach. After talking with Coach Chow and negotiating with his son, Carter, who also serves as his attorney, we made arrangements for the press conference on Thursday, December 22nd. I’d also like to point out that I was very impressed with how Coach Chow’s primary concern was on all the issues that would help build a successful UH football program (versus being focused on his personal compensation). I’d have to add that Carter Chow also very much impressed me because he too was concerned much more about the “bigger picture” on how we would make UH football a success for our whole State.

The rest is pretty much history and has been well covered by our local media as far as contract details, possible assistant coaches, etc. Last thing I’d like to do is thank Governor Abercrombie again for hosting UH Athletics and Coach Chow at Washington Place after the press conference – where we were able to introduce Coach Chow to many of the “movers and shakers” in town, which we believe will help build strong support for Coach Chow as he begins to build the UH football program in his vision.

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Re: January: 1st and 10 with Jim Donovan Thursday Jan 5th 10

Post by Jim Donovan »

warriorfan_82 wrote:Aloha Jim,

Can you give us a status update on recent athletic facilities improvements, such as the TC Ching complex, and any other projects in the works?

Also, is there any resolution on the University of Hawaii's men's (Warriors, Rainbow Warriors & Rainbows) and women's (Rainbow Wahines & Wahines) nicknames for the 2012-2013 season?

Thank you for your time,

Go Warriors!!!
----------------------------------------------

warriorfan_82 -

There are at least three projects I expect to be under construction this year:

1) The Clarence TC Ching Complex -- I'm being told that the plans are all finished and this project should be going out to bid literally any day now. Assuming it takes about 30-45 days for the bid process to be completed (and assuming there are no protests), I think it's reasonable to expect the actual construction to start by at least summertime. Yes, it's been frustrating that this project has taken so long, but as I said before, there are some good reasons for the length of time -- probably the main one being they are building the complex "from scratch" because there are no water or sewer facilities at that location, and while there is electricity, it's tied into the field lighting system, which makes even that issue complicated.

2) The Nagatani Academic Center and main women's locker room expansion/renovation -- The plans for this project are also all completed and approved, so it should be going out for bid soon. Again, it would be reasonable to expect construction on this project to begin by summertime.

3) Practice sand volleyball courts -- My understanding is that the plans are done for these practice courts and hopefully, they'll be built and available sometime in the next few months.

There are probably a few more other construction projects that may start in 2012, but in light of the time it takes for projects to move from the idea stage to the construction stage, I just don't know if they'll be actually under construction in 2012.

As to the second part of your question, eventually I would like to see consistent names -- at least one consistent name for the men's sports and one consistent name for the women's sports (they obviously could be different names). That said, we've has so many other issues to deal with that have had to take a higher priority (frankly, so many that I'm not going to bother to list them), but I hope to get to this issue sooner than later (and for those of you that think this is a simple issue, it's not -- there are many various strong and emotional feelings about what each sport calls themselves...)

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Re: January: 1st and 10 with Jim Donovan Thursday Jan 5th 10

Post by Jim Donovan »

Sportsbow wrote:Hi Jim and Happy New Year.

With all of this conference realignment going on, and with most of them having a conference championship game, plus some of them playing 9 conference games to go with the championship game, did you ever consider declaring a hardship on UH scheduling and asking the NCAA about adding an extra week at the beginning of the season for all teams in football and make it a 15 week regular season schedule? This will make it easier for all teams to schedule UH without losing one of their bye week. For those teams that don't play UH, they will have that extra bye week and it will make their scheduling much easier also. Teams that play at UH will still have 2 bye weeks in the regular season, while teams that don't play at UH will have 3 bye weeks, which they had originally before the NCAA allowed the 12th game for everyone.

With this current 14 week regular season schedule, most of the schools don't want to lose that bye week by playing an extra game and leave them with only one bye week in a season. Some of the teams were unable to schedule a 13th game when playing at UH because they either don't want to lose that bye week or, had a hard time finding teams to play them because of the same reason about losing a bye week.

The most important thing about adding an extra week to the schedule is that, it gives student athletes for all schools more time in classes during the regular season. If the NCAA really care about the student athletes education, they should consider adding this extra week to the season.

I hope you consider asking the NCAA this. Just look at the upcoming 2012 schedule. It seems like you're having a hard time in finding the 13th game. What I'm trying to say is, if you don't ask, then you will never know! No harm in trying.

Mahalo
-----------------------------------------

Sportsbow -

I brought this exact issue up to Craig Thompson, Commissioner of the Mountain West Conference, at our fall athletic directors' meeting in Dallas. He understands the issue and we will be submitting legislation through the Mountain West Conference (MWC) requesting that the University of Hawaii and any football program that utilizes the Hawaii exemption may be able to schedule a football game one week earlier than the official start of the football season. The normal timeframe for submitting new legislation is in early summer, so we'll be working with the MWC over the next few months to come up with the exact language for the proposed legislation. Frankly, I don't know if this legislation will be approved, but I feel very strongly that it needs to be considered (and hopefully approved). We shall see...

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Re: January: 1st and 10 with Jim Donovan Thursday Jan 5th 10

Post by Jim Donovan »

eonatoa wrote:is this chat goin on right now? if so, where? i cant see anything!

my question for JD......... Please explain the reduction in the Football Head Coaches salary from over a million to 500,000.

Thanks!
------------------------------------

eonatoa -

I think the best way to answer this question is to just state that my philosophy is to provide our head coaches with a reasonable base pay and performance incentives. The perfomance incentives, if met, could substantially raise the coach's compensation for a particular year. My philosophy is when the team does well, and the athletic department and University do well, then the head coach should be able to also do well in regards to additional compensation based on positive performance.

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Re: January: 1st and 10 with Jim Donovan Thursday Jan 5th 10

Post by Jim Donovan »

Okay, thank you so much for your support and questions. I'm very optimistic about 2012 and the direction UH Athletic Department is heading! That said, we really can't be successful without your sustained support -- and I'm very grateful we have it! May 2012 be a fantastic, healthy and prosperous year for all of the Sports Hawaii ohana! See you next month.

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