Craig Angelos reflects on first year as UH-Manoa AD

With competition done for all sports for the University of Hawaii in the 2023-2024 school year, Year 1 for UH-Manoa athletics director Craig Angelos has officially come to an end. But the job never stops for Angelos, who last week was in a conference in Las Vegas.

Angelos recently sat with KHON2 for a Q&A on his first year on the job, with questions ranging from Aloha Stadium to coaching contracts, to the future of college athletics as a whole and Hawaii’s place in it.

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KHON2: Mahalo for doing this. It’s been 13 months since you were selected for this job. With a full year under your belt, how would you sum up your time at the University of Hawaii so far?

Craig Angelos: “It’s been a great experience. I think I’ve really felt welcomed to the community but know there’s a lot of work ahead. What I’ve tried to do this first year is look and listen and find out what has been going on and see what’s going well, continue that. If things need an an adjustment or a change, then try to find a solution for that, too. I’ve done that for the whole year, looked under every rock and opened every aspect of the department. Things are going well. I’ve moved on, and things that have needed adjustment, I’ve tried to hone in on that. It’s been a good experience. There’s a lot of great things going on here and like any place, there’s some challenges. That’s pretty much what I’ve been doing my first year and then trying to formulate a plan going forward and how we’re going to get better here and adapt to the changing times in the collegiate landscape.”

KHON2: There was an 11 year gap between your two AD jobs at Florida Atlantic and Hawaii. How much of a desire did you have during that to work your way back to the position of department head?

Angelos: “I got off to a fast track early on in my career. I was able to be in some good spots and get elevated very quickly and I got my first AD job at a fairly young age. I was there for about nine years and then a new (university) president comes in and makes a change with the senior leadership and so I had to start back up that mountain again and I’ve been a No. 2 now at six different universities, and I’ve been a No. 1 at two different universities. I wanted to be an athletic director really badly and I got to that point pretty quickly in my career and didn’t anticipate being knocked off the top of the mountain, but that’s what happened. Then it was like, OK, so how do I get back to being an athletic director? It’s so hard to be an athletic director. There’s only 133 FBS athletic directors in the country. Many, many people want to be one. I say the sun and the stars and the moon have to align to get these jobs because they’re just so unique. It’s different for every job and it’s very hard to get jobs. When I was able to get back, I was like, ‘This is fantastic.’ It’s been a climb to get back and I’m very happy to get back and I probably appreciate it even more the second time around.”

KHON2: How much have you and your family accustomed yourselves to island life? When’s the last time you wore a suit?

Angelos: “It’s great, especially the tropical environment here. Every day is between 75 and 85 degrees. We spent a lot of time in Florida, so we really appreciate the tropics and the warm weather and it’s exactly the place we want to be.

“I put a sport coat on when I went to the mainland (last week) for meetings. I was telling people it was the first time I put a sport coat on in a year. I think that’s one of the great things about being here, in all honesty. You just get up and put your aloha shirt on and it suffices for every occasion. That’s one of the greatest things about living in Hawaii.”

KHON2: What’s one thing you were pleasantly surprised by upon working at UH, and what’s one thing that surprised you in a not-so-good way?

Angelos: “The thing I was pleasantly surprised about is the engagement from the fans and the community at large, how much they love their sports teams. I didn’t know the depth of that relationship before I got here. I’ve been very surprised with the support that they have, coming out for their sports teams. Baseball, men’s and women’s volleyball, men’s and women’s basketball, football. I know we have some challenges in trying to wait for the new Aloha Stadium but that’s why I’ve been very pleasantly surprised, just with how great the fans have been and how much they love their team.

“Some of the challenges I’ve seen, which is the same as almost any place in college athletics: The challenge of the financial structure. Being able to raise money, being able to sell tickets, get revenue sources. That’s been probably the biggest challenge, is trying to look at things like how do we raise our fundraising model. How can we improve our ticket sales model? Our licensing model, how do we monetize our assets that we have? That’s the name of the game in college athletics. When you talk to the athletic directors I’ve been around lately, it’s about, ‘How do we monetize these assets at our university?’ Because it’s never enough, and that’s what we have to do here: Continue to try to monetize our assets and put out a good product, continue to represent the school and state well. But all that takes money.”

KHON2: If you could go back a year to your first day at UH and give yourself a piece of advice, what would it be?

Angelos: “Be patient and figure out how to navigate the landscape because it’s a very unique landscape here. I think you gotta be able to navigate the various constituencies that you work with and try to make progress with that too and try to build good relationships.”

KHON2: In Year 1, you hired a head coach for water polo in James Robinson . You also parted ways with one in former men’s tennis coach Joël Kusnierz in May. What went into making that decision with Kusnierz?

Angelos: “Any kind of personnel decisions are very difficult and also very confidential. Everything has its cycle and I think it was a good run for him, but then I thought it was time to turn the page and keep going. I guess that’s probably the best way to put it without violating anyone’s confidence.”

KHON2: Looking ahead to the 2024-2025 academic year, I understand Eran Ganot, Timmy Chang and Rich Hill each have two seasons remaining on their respective contracts. At a lot of other schools, those sports (basketball, football and baseball) are the big three. Where do things stand with each coach?

Angelos: “I think they’re all fantastic people. I like working with every one of them and they’ve all faced different challenges within the program. Rich has only been here a couple of years, Timmy’s been here a couple of years and Eran’s been here longer, but every sport is different, too, especially the landscape now with NIL and with transferring. Those are issues you have to combat also, especially at our level. If they’ve got really good players, those players could easily be picked off by other schools, Power Four programs that are willing to offer more money out of their NIL. I worry, and I know they do too, about how do we retain our best players? You get great players, develop them, but as soon as they catch the eye of a Power Four team, they can swoop in and give them more money. As a coach, you have to go find a new player and develop them. I know they’re struggling with how to adapt, we all are in the Group of 5.

“But I think they’ve all done very well, they certainly want to do better. It’s about talent and accumulating good players, and that’s the hard part. Our collectives aren’t as high as I wish they were. That would really help. I think those guys are committed in trying to get great players over here. From a character standpoint, they’ve got great players. They’re great men of character, too. So, I’m really happy with the quality of people we have. I’m aligned with them and engaged with them on how to continue to grow the program and get better players in here and win more games, win conference championships and get to the NCAA Tournament. I think that’s the goal for all of us, and for Timmy to make a bowl game. Those are our goals and I think they’re on their way. They’re certainly facing challenges like we all are, but I’m very pleased with where they are.”

KHON2: How crucial is it in your opinion for coaches to have the security of more than one year left on their deals? Or is it not as important in the transfer portal era where players, like coaches, can leave freely?

Angelos: “I was told early on in my career from a really successful baseball coach who used to go to the World Series every year that you never want to go into your last year without a new contract, which I totally understand because if you go to the final day of your contract, then you’re subject to, ‘Are they retaining me or are they not retaining me?’ And I’d rather know if I’m them, too, a year out, are we gonna extend this or not? If you’re not, OK, fine. That gives me time to go try and find another job. If you are going to retain me, that’s good. We’ll continue to go forward. I think from a business perspective and a humanitarian perspective, I think it’s good to communicate with your coaches who are under contract what your intentions are and make some decisions. And it’s OK not to renew someone and let it run its course, that’s OK too. They understand. But it’s also good not to let them hang out and dry and wonder, ‘Are they gonna keep me? Are they not gonna keep me?’ So, I think it is important to communicate, especially going into your last year of your contract, what the intentions are going forward. I’m a big believer in that. Just treating people well and being honest with them. If you’re not gonna renew, let them know we’re not gonna do that. Or if you want one more year to wait and see, let them know that, too. They can decide if they want to take another job or wait it out, or you extend their contract. That’s kind of how the process plays out in college coaching that I’ve seen. Just want to communicate with them and be upfront with them. It’s a very competitive environment and with the transfer portal and whatnot, they can regroup in one year. If they’re not having a very good year, they can change it around in the last year because they can bring players in and flip it. In the old days, if they were going downhill, it was hard to change the momentum of that. Now, they can flip it by bringing on a whole new team, which is what’s happening these days. It’s a new day. Coaches have more pressure and they’re never really in a rebuilding phase. It’s a different environment. Players can leave, coaches can leave, but I do think back to your original question, you do want to be upfront with the coaches and treat them well and be honest with them.”

KHON2: From your first stint as a college AD to now, the amateur sports landscape has changed tremendously, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic but especially the last three years. There’s ongoing topics such as conference realignment, athlete and/or employee classification, and even retroactive subjects such as NIL back pay. How much anxiety does it bring to an athletics director who has to navigate all of this?

Angelos: “I was around other Mountain West and Big West athletic directors recently as well as Lead 1, which features athletic directors from the 133 (FBS) schools. There’s a comfort level of being around those in the same boat as you, because you’re speaking the same language and facing the same challenges. There’s real strength that comes through that. There’s also anxiety because it’s just a shifting landscape. The ($2.8 billion House v. NCAA settlement), we’re all getting hit, all the schools and conferences are getting hit. The Power Four schools are going to see a requirement of distributing 22% of their revenues with their players. In our league, the Mountain West, it’s not required, it’s more permissive legislation. The Power Four leagues, it’s required, though. Between the House settlement, losing out on revenues, the revenue share program, going away from scholarship limits as part of the settlements and going towards roster limits. You’re seeing the Power Four, and even the Power Two between the Big Ten and the SEC launching out even further than the ACC and Big 12, you’re seeing a huge, huge divide. It’s getting there, but it’s getting more wide. Everyone’s trying to look at, ‘Where’s our program? Where are we? Where do we want to go?’ What do we want our program to look like at the University of Hawaii? What do the people want it to be? It’s not my program, it’s the people’s program of Hawaii. We’re kind of at a crossroads where there’s more and more separation, conference realignment that’s still out there. We’ve got house settlement, we’ve got the NIL collectives, transfer portal and all that, it needs to be funded the right way. There’s a lot of discussion. I always stress that in the midst of this chaos, more so than in my 30 years of being in college athletics, the game is still the same. The team element, the student-athlete experience is still the same. Even when I played, once the team is brought together, it’s about going to practice, playing the game, travel, camaraderie, overcoming challenges, achieving triumph. Those elements are still there. It’s just that the teams are changing every year. The coaches and players can leave after a year. Once that gets cleared up, we start back up in the middle of the summer and start that climb. At the end of the season, it blows back up again and we start that climb. The game is still the same. It’s a great experience for the fans, great experience for the student-athletes. But there’s a lot of chaos in between.”

KHON2: Some of the big boys in college athletics have just one NIL collective for efficiency’s sake. There’s at least a couple that sponsor Hawaii athletes. Would you prefer to see a streamlined process for Hawaii athletes or is there no preference?

Angelos: “The No. 1 thing is getting as many people involved in contributing to a collective or collectives. That’s the No. 1 thing I’d like to see. Whether it’s two or one (collective), it doesn’t really matter. It’s outside of the athletic department so it’s market-driven. Whoever wants to get together to form a collective or collectives, they can do that. I know the Downtown Athletic Club formed a collective early on. I know the Rainbow Collective is doing very well. I don’t mind of there’s more than one collective, the bottom line is we need more people contributing to the collectives. Our collective is not anywhere close to Power Five. Even the Mountain West, some of those teams are doing very well. In the Big West, there’s about three collectives in the Big West, so that’s not as competitive as the Mountain West. But we need to do much better, especially on the football side. We’ve got a person running a collective on the basketball side and he’s done very well. But we really need to bolster our collective on the football side for sure.”

KHON2: With revenue sharing around the corner for Power Four schools, where do you see how Group of Five schools such as Hawaii fit in? Do you think revenue sharing could stifle or even eliminate NIL dealings?

Angelos: “I think NIL is here to stay. Even when it was illegal 10, 20, 30 years ago, what people went on probation for, there was still an appetite for people to contribute there. Now it’s all legal, so there’s still gonna be an appetite for donors and boosters. The revenue share should be interesting to see. That’s 22% of your revenues that you’re gonna have to share. Who is going to audit that to make sure the student-athletes are still collecting their full 22%? That’s going to be a little bit of a quagmire, too. There’s a lot of details to be worked out. I just think it is a long time coming. When you think about NIL, you used to tell people sorry that amateurism rules don’t allow you to profit off your name, image and likeness. You can’t sell your jersey, you can’t do a television commercial.

“Fast-forward and people are saying no, they should be able to do that. The rule changed. The house settlement is on all the money they missed out on. That jumped to collectives, where it’s kind of a salary cap situation. They have to do some quid pro quo relations to make it legal, but it doesn’t have to be commensurate with the money they’re getting. They’re getting (for example) $100,000 from a collective, saying make sure you tweet every week about how important this organization is or something like that. The rev share is going to be interesting to see how that plays out, but I definitely think NIL is here to stay and the collectives, too. It’s just about are we going to be able to sustain that level here as opposed to Power Four schools? We’re gonna take on that challenge.”

KHON2: Seeing impact players on UH men’s and women’s teams enter the transfer portal after strong seasons, what kind of emotion does that evoke?

Angelos: “It’s an evolving emotion. The reason I say that is because in the beginning a few years ago, it was a sense of betrayal, like ‘I found you and gave you a scholarship and played you when no one else did. Other schools were out there, they passed on you for whatever reason. I believed in you. I brought you here and you developed into a great player.’ (Players) leaving, I think coaches now feel jilted a little bit, ‘I found you when no one else would.’

“I think, as I’ve talked to coaches about, you gotta look at it a little different these days with NIL money and NIL agents. I think you need to look at it more like a free agency period. You can’t take it personally, because the money is so big now and these people only have a short amount of time to make it. If they don’t go pro, they’re gonna be taking pay cuts when they leave college. Think about that. The first generation that’s gonna have to take pay cuts when they leave college. You can’t blame them for trying to maximize their value. You have to look at it like free agency. Say they want to leave and they’re a great player and great person. We say, ‘Tell you what. Go test the free agency market, let us know eventually but take a couple of weeks, go shop it around, see what you’re able to get, your value. In the meantime, we’ll sharpen our pencils on our side and try to come up with a more favorable offer to you also. In two weeks, come back and let’s get together. We’ll tell you the best we can do and you can compare it to what you have and see where we go from there.’ We gotta win ’em back and not take it personally like, ‘Fine, you’re out of here. We’re done with you.’ No. You’ve gotta try to hold on to them. Sharpen your pencil and then come back and prepare notes and hopefully you can keep them. If not, you wish them well and move on and that’s the new name of the game.”

KHON2: At this very moment, what’s the most concrete update you can give on the progress towards a new Aloha Stadium?

Angelos: “It’s widely known that they’ve narrowed down a list of potential developers to two. In the near future, they’re gonna narrow it down to one. When they narrow it down to one, they’ll spend nine months trying to negotiate a contract and see if they can agree on a contract. Once they choose someone, they take nine months to negotiate. When they negotiate a contract with the developer, then I think we’re on our way. The summer of 2025, maybe this time next year is what you’re really looking at as a key time. If they get the contract done, I think that gives them the time to go and start the project and the goal of playing at the new Aloha Stadium in the fall of 2028 against Kansas. If it doesn’t come to fruition and they can’t get a contract, then we need to go to Plan B. But I’m hoping, we’re all hoping, that we can get that stadium up there. I think that would be good for the state, it would be good for our university, for our football program. That’s what we’re hoping for.”

KHON2: Looking around campus, there seems to be quite a few projects in progress, as well as some that a lot of people agree need to be done but have yet to come to fruition. In your year here, what have you learned about the process it takes to get a new women’s soccer and track and field practice field, a new turf surface and hitting facility for the baseball team, among other things, with the resources you have available?

Angelos: “I will say one of the things that’s so fantastic about being here in Hawaii is the legislature has funded all of these projects for as long as they’ve been here. They funded the baseball program, the Stan Sheriff Center, they funded everything, and that’s a real benefit that most schools don’t see. Most schools have to raise the money themselves and whatever they can’t raise, they go out and get a loan, bond it out, and they pay that loan back over the years. Most schools are like that, but that’s the beauty of being the state’s only Division I school here and the legislature totally being behind it. That’s a beautiful thing. Having said that, we have a lot of really good facilities. Some of them are a little bit older that we probably need to spruce up a little bit, some we might need some newer facilities. We’re engaged in a facility masterplan where there’s some people from the outside coming in and determining which ones we really need to refresh a little bit and which ones we need new facilities in. We gotta keep up with out competitors and we need to create the next 40 years. This has been great for 40 years and we need to continue those, but we need to ask what we want the next 40 years to look like as far as UH athletics and the facilities. We’re doing a facility masterplan right now that we’re in the middle of and we should be done soon. Got a lot of good ideas. Along with that, (former UH AD) David Matlin and others were able to secure CIP (capital improvement plan) money from the legislature, which have been earmarked for projects such as new turf for baseball, batting cage for baseball, new locker rooms for men’s and women’s volleyball, helping out with the second phase of the track and field project. The track and soccer stadium was already approved and that should be done by probably January, and the legislature funded that.

“The facilities masterplan and what the future could look like is the third piece I’m bringing forward here. That hasn’t been funded, that hasn’t been presented to anybody yet. That’ll be the last piece that we present to our regents and legislators and say, ‘Hey, this is where we think we need to go.’ That goes hand in hand with the NASED project, too. If they can build the new Aloha Stadium in Halawa, then that frees up some space here that we could do other things with as part of our masterplan.”

KHON2: You recently spoke about a plan to make UH’s brand global. What were some of the bullet points of that?

Angelos: “Trying to get our presence and our brand more into Asia and Japan especially, but also Taiwan, Korea. I’ve made three trips out to Japan this year. We’re trying to expand our reach and our brand out there. Men’s basketball went out there for 10 days last summer, women’s basketball just got back. Men’s volleyball was out there last fall. Golf is gonna be out there this year, too.

“I’m also trying to take a football game out there. I had a team lined up to play us over in Japan. That’s part of the reason I went there. Can we take a team to one of the stadiums in Japan and really make a big splash over there? The team has since backed off because of the distance and they’re in another conference now. I’m seeing if there’s other teams, but I’d like if we could play football over there and really try to make inroads there.

“What I think it does is it helps our licensing. We can sell product over there and be Japan’s college team. I know UCLA has a big presence, a few marketing offices over there. It would really help us with our merchandise sales and our brand. I think it helps us with our recruiting for other sports, too. We’ve got five or so athletes from Japan playing on our sports teams. That’s a little closer reach for those star athletes going to Hawaii versus going to the mainland. I think it’ll help with the recruiting of star athletes, and students in general, to get them to attend the University of Hawaii, make it where we’re your U.S. based university. And overall, our brand awareness over there. Hopefully, it’s gonna be monetized over there, our licensing and merchandise, but also use it as a recruiting tool for the student-athletes and students in general. Again, monetizing it would help get students over here. Also from a cultural exchange standpoint, bring our people over there. The Japanese university system isn’t quite like the U.S. No country is. Those countries, those sports are played at the club level and you go to school just for your education. In the U.S., you can play sports and go to school at the same university. They’re trying to do that too. I’ve been out there a couple of times to speak about how to integrate the U.S. system into the Japanese system. Some of the top schools, the University of Tsukuba did a great job of providing educational opportunities as well as athletic opportunities. We’ve made a lot of contacts over there. Just trying to expand our brand.”

KHON2: Mahalo again for doing this. Is there anything you’d like to add or expand on?

Angelos: “It’s been a great experience. A great first year. There’s no place that does senior nights like Hawaii. It’s important for the fans and the community at large. A lot of good things going on here. A lot of challenges going forward, making adjustments. Hopefully we can align ourselves to do that because alignment, all the way down from the Governor, to the legislature, to the regents to the university personnel, all the way down, that’s what we’re striving for: Alignment in moving the state’s athletic program forward. That’s our goal.”