The University of Hawai'i press release announcing the formation of a "five-member advisory committee to assist athletic director Herman Frazier with the screening and interviewing of candidates for the head men's basketball coaching position" had barely circulated when the pointed questions began being fired.

No basketball people?

A lawyer not named Jeff Portnoy?

Somebody from the UH Center for Japanese Studies?

Well, isn't the Center for Japanese Studies the first place you'd turn to for help in ferreting out a new basketball coach? Just as folks there undoubtedly call down to athletics for help when the search is on for an instructor in kambun.

Outside of Tony Guerrero, who is vice chairman of 'Ahahui Koa Anuenue, the umbrella booster organization bankrolling much of the operation these days, there is nobody involved with basketball. The only athletic department figure is a competing athlete. In track and field.

Clearly, this call will be made from the athletic director's chair as the framework suggests it is constructed to be.

Make no mistake about it, committee members are wonderful, talented, university-minded people all. And generous of their time. But the last time a selection committee had a significant say on a sports hire at UH was well ...

Let's see, that would be about six years ago when Mike Trapasso got the baseball job. It was a much different committee, one heavily composed of baseball stakeholders — Duane Kurisu, Don Takaki, Warren Haruki, Edison Miyawaki, Don Robbs etc. Many of whom anted up financially to help the program.

Just as you might have hoped this one would have included some stakeholders, former players and a larger sprinkling of movers and shakers.

Or, better yet, bring in the finalists for the fans, the university and the community to meet as UH has done in the last two searches for a Manoa Chancellor.

With national letter of intent day April 11 fast approaching and schools who had vacancies occur after UH already filling their openings, are committees a layer that this already cumbersome process really needs?

History tells us committees have become more and more public relations-oriented. They get people from disparate areas involved, bringing in elements of alumni, faculty, students, community. Not a bad thing, really but mostly providing a filter for whoever is making the call. Several people who served on the so-called committee to assist in the last AD hire maintain that was very much a top-down decision.

So, be assured this will be strictly the athletic director's call. The amount of "advice" he chooses to accept will be his decision. The name that goes on to the UH President will be the one Frazier is most comfortable with forwarding. He is, after all, charged with running the department and the men's basketball coach is one of the two or three key coaching hires among the 19 sports.

For Frazier it is all that and more. It is a hiring opportunity given both added portent and urgency now. It is his first marquee hire at UH and only the second big ticket pick of his seven-year career as an athletic director spanning stints at UH and Alabama-Birmingham. And, coming as it does on the heels of the ongoing football scheduling fiasco, it has to be a much-welcomed opportunity to change perceptions.

Not the type of situation Frazier is going to leave to a committee.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.