For a couple weeks now, Mike Wilton has been telling anybody who will listen — and some who won't — that long-time assistant Tino Reyes should be his successor for the job of men's volleyball coach at the University of Hawai'i.

It has been an unrelenting refrain. One that, if for nothing else, you've got to admire Wilton's fierce loyalty and dogged persistence in proselytizing on behalf of his right-hand man.

And, clearly, Reyes' 17-year body of work at UH deserves a good, long look.

But, history suggests, it will be an upset if it goes beyond that. The past tells us that such testimonials rarely carry the day, at least at UH. For better or worse — and we've seen examples of both — these endorsements might as well be written in smoke for all the weight they tend to carry there.

Gosh knows how coaches have campaigned, though, even button-holing legislators and regents. But at Manoa, you can count on one hand — and still have fingers left over — the number of major coaching positions that have gone to the candidate recommended by the departing coach in the last two decades. And the last one that did, the men's basketball head coaching job to Bob Nash, was probably in spite of his predecessor's (Riley Wallace) avowed support rather than because of it given the personalities involved.

You can understand where head coaches are coming from, especially those that have put in a lot of years and sweat equity into shaping a successful program. They come to think of the programs they have invested so much in as their own and want an in-the-family continuation. Sentiments often based as much upon loyalty and emotion as reason.

More dispassionate are supposed to be the athletic directors, who are charged with making the call on hires. Their job performance is evaluated in part by the quality of who they bring in.

The late athletic director Stan Sheriff used to say that recommendations, especially unsolicited ones, were nice but usually futile gestures. "I'm not going to get to pick my successor, so why would coaches think they are going to be able to pick theirs?"

Curiously, however, Sheriff did, though very much on his own terms, end up picking two assistant coaches who had been recommended candidates: Vince Goo as women's basketball coach (by Bill Nepfel) and Bob Wagner as football coach (by Dick Tomey).

Both were highly successful, taking their sports to new levels. But, when the time came, neither of them got to name their eventual replacements.

In those cases, too bad as it turned out.

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