It wasn't just the early-morning sun reflecting off the five diamonds set in an Olympic configuration on his U.S. Olympic ring that sparkled on the June day in 2002 when Herman Frazier was introduced as the University of Hawai'i-Manoa athletics director.

So, too, did the possibilities, as then-UH President Evan Dobelle and a cast of dignitaries toasted Frazier's hiring in the Bachman Hall foyer.

Where previous UH directors were introduced in the athletic department in little more than pot-luck affairs, Frazier got the red-carpet treatment befitting a man Dobelle hailed as "a true American hero" and someone "who will do great things for this university, this state. Someone who can lead without limits."

Today, UH looks for Frazier's replacement, having announced his buyout yesterday in the wake of football coach June Jones' stunning departure to Southern Methodist University. "In the best interests of the athletic program," UH said it will pay $312,510 to buy out a contract that was to have concluded July 31, 2010.

For the first three years, there were few major complaints about Frazier's stewardship of athletics other than an inability to balance a budget that last year showed an unrestricted net deficit of $4.2 million through June 30, 2006, the last fiscal year for which the audit has been available.

And he was caught unaware when Texas-El Paso, the Western Athletic Conference's senior member at the time, bolted to Conference USA. "I don't think UTEP is going anywhere," Frazier predicted a week before the Miners announced a defection to C-USA in 2004.

But the Jones contract debacle, which prompted a public apology by UH President David McClain Monday, was the latest in a string of controversies and missteps that have hovered over Frazier's administration of the state's only major-college athletic program in the past two years.

The missed opportunity to keep the most successful football coach in school history — one Jones and his friends attributed to lack of action and commitment — seems to underline a lack of attention to detail in recent years by the man charged with running the $23 million department.

COULDN'T PRODUCE

Just six months earlier, in June 2007, Frazier announced a football schedule for three months hence that had, for the first time, two teams from the lower-cast Football Championship Subdivision (Northern Colorado and Charleston Southern). FCS teams grant fewer scholarships and have fewer assistant coaches and smaller budgets.

What was to have been a 13-game schedule reluctantly became 12 games when Frazier said he was unable to find another suitable opponent to fill it out.

As late as November 2006, Frazier, 53, had four openings for the 2007 schedule but maintained he would find quality opponents and fill out a completed 13-game schedule. Just a month earlier, he said filling a complete schedule with quality opponents would "be a piece of cake."

Michigan State, which bought its way out of a scheduled game for the $250,000 cancellation fee, resulted in one opening. But Frazier struggled to fill the others before finally announcing Washington, Charleston Southern and Northern Colorado for a lineup that drew much derision nationally as well as locally.

At an O'ahu Interscholastic Association banquet in March with McClain in the crowd, a series of speakers, including Lt. Gov. James "Duke" Aiona, turned Frazier's scheduling into punchlines. Frazier's grilling by State Rep. K. Mark Takai at the Legislature drew wide attention.

The 11th-hour scheduling was in sharp contrast to the late Stan Sheriff, one of his predecessors at UH who would get antsy if football schedules weren't complete two years before kickoff.

The scheduling debacle played out amid a slow-moving search for Riley Wallace's successor as men's basketball coach.

Wallace's contract, which was signed in 2005 and which Frazier oversaw, specified that "both the coach and the university understand and agree that the term of this agreement will not be extended or renewed" after Wallace completed the 2006-07 season.

Despite the lead-time, Frazier announced the process to find a new coach on Dec. 29, 2006, but as the perception grew that the search was dragging on, Frazier came in for frequent criticism on radio call-in shows and online sites. Things got so bad that when Wallace was honored in March 2007 at his last home game, fans showered Frazier with a heavy chorus of boos.

So loud was the outpouring that even Wallace, who came to be increasingly at odds with the man who he claimed forced him out, put a hand on Frazier's shoulder at midcourt.

Thereafter Frazier made fewer appearances in front of large crowds even after Bob Nash was hired April 13.

Even in the course of the Warriors' most successful football season, a 12-0 regular season that would take UH to the Bowl Championship Series, placards demanding "Fire Frazier!" were seen in the Aloha Stadium stands.

BOWL TICKET GAFFE

Then came a firestorm of controversy when the Warriors were selected to the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans and many season-ticket holders complained of being unable to get tickets for the game against Georgia. UH officials underestimated the local demand and, pressured by the Sugar Bowl to make a decision to take the full 17,500-ticket allotment or turn 4,000 back immediately without financial penalty, chose to take the lesser amount.

Moreover, some fans who said they were unable to get tickets complained that other fans bought in huge multiples of as many as 100 in at least two cases.

Then came the issue of Jones' five-year contract, which was set to expire June 30, 2008 and for which the Sugar Bowl would be his final contracted game with UH.

The incidents and apparent inattention to detail contrast with a picture that had been painted of Frazier as the meticulous, detail-oriented operator when he came to UH.

"He is one of the most prepared individuals I have ever met," New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner said at the time. Steinbrenner, who met Frazier through their Olympic work, said, "He's very detail-oriented."

But, as Steinbrenner likes to say, "It isn't the elephants that will get you, it is those mice at your feet."

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com.