All of you know full well the great pains I’ve always taken never to be too strict, too rigid, with the application of our laws. And as a consequence, have we not learned to live together in relative peace and
All of you know full well the great pains I’ve always taken never to be too strict, too rigid, with the application of our laws. And as a consequence, have we not learned to live together in relative peace and harmony? Huh? And this day’s lawlessness is how you repay my leniency. Well you leave me with little choice. An assault on the king’s soldiers is the same as an assault on the king, himself.
Any movie buffs will know that this speech is followed by the British magistrate ending the life of William Wallace’s wife for said transgressions against the throne.
That scene from “Braveheart” was the first thing that came to mind when I heard that the big, bad NCAA was coming to town to investigate potential transgressions by the University of Hawaii men’s basketball program. The issue at hand seems to involve assistant coach Brandyn Akana, who was not with the Rainbow Warriors for their final eight games of the season, as well as a four-game absence in late January.
The Star-Advertiser reported that the issue “stems from an inquiry into an ‘addition’ to a document said to have been sent to UH concerning a recent recruit.”
Take that for what you will. Sounds truly nefarious.
I’m not usually for breaking rules or cheating the system, and if this turns out to be a major violation then UH will have to suffer the consequences. But to see the NCAA play the role of moral authority is just as disgusting as that British magistrate lecturing the Scots, who were living in servitude, about peace and harmony.
All colleges and student-athletes operate under the thumb of the NCAA. As an organization, it likes to repeatedly use the word “amateur,” which serves two purposes: It allows it to continue ruling over the true proprietors of college athletics while also appearing sanctimonious and pure to the general public. It gets to feast on the toils of its underlings and still seem genuine when wagging its finger at rule violations and cover-ups.
Have we not learned to live together in relative peace and harmony?
Delusional.
Akana is the only member of Arnold’s staff from Hawaii, having grown up in Kaunakakai and then attending BYU-Hawaii for his undergraduate degree before receiving a master’s from UH. He isn’t some team film editor who may have erred while doing paperwork. He’s been on head coach Gib Arnold’s staff now for three seasons after nine as an assistant at BYU-Hawaii and is referred to as the team’s “recruiting coordinator” on his official UH bio.
Despite working mostly with the team’s guards, Akana has clearly been an important facet to the development of the ‘Bows in terms of on-court success and the influx of talent. Forward Isaac Fotu, a first team Big West performer this season, referred to him by name when I talked to him earlier this season about the team’s outer-island appearances.
“It was a good experience to play (on Molokai) with Coach Akana being from there,” Fotu said. “It meant a lot to him, as well.”
Losing his insights in practice and games for most of the final six weeks could not have helped Coach Arnold or his players’ performance down the stretch.
It’s impossible to predict what the NCAA investigation will uncover, if anything, but usually when they make their presence known, something is to follow. The system has become set up so that schools are usually forced to feel they must cover up even the whiff of impropriety. UH didn’t do that here. The quiet suspension — though not officially called that — caught the eye of the NCAA, which now gets to come do what it loves to do: look disappointed, shake its head and lecture on how it’s just trying to uphold a peaceful existence for its amateur athletes, all in the name of some invisible throne.
Well when you’re watching March Madness this week with kids performing in front of packed arenas on four different TV networks as tens of millions of lackadaisical employees follow the action hoping to win a billion dollars from Warren Buffett, think about how much of that feels “amateur.”
