Is this the day University of Hawai'i athletic director Jim Donovan steps up and apologizes for the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping?

Or, might he offer to take the hit on skyrocketing oil prices? Will he accept the rap on global warming and tainted tomatoes, too?

In less than three months on the job at UH, Donovan has found few swords he won't fall on for the alma mater. There's been little limit to the pitches he'll take for the "team" in green.

Never mind that Donovan wasn't at UH as the accumulated budget deficit soared to a record $4.4 million, he still apologized to legislators in March for what the athletic department did before he came on board.

Over the weekend, he apologized for the foot dragging and obfuscation that turned the Sugar Bowl travel list into the public relations mess it has become. This despite the fact he wasn't on board when it started and apparently had no voice in the curious, meandering course it has taken.

It is refreshing that somebody around UH isn't afraid of responsibility. It would be more noteworthy, however, if it was actually the someone — or ones — who did the deeds coming forward.

As friends have counseled Donovan recently, if he stays in Manoa long enough, he'll have ample time to make his own mistakes and come clean on them without taking on the marquee ones of others.

You sense that Donovan, who played, coached and worked at UH in a variety of capacities over nearly a quarter-century, desperately wants to rebuild public confidence and community trust in the place as well as win games and balance budgets. Maybe he wants to show his bosses he can be a team player as he has asked his own staff to be. Perhaps he hopes to lead by example, a commendable and all-too-rare trait, to be sure.

But his willingness to dive under the bus, whether on command or of his own initiative, has allowed the culpable parties to go on their merry way with little in the way of assurances the same mistakes won't be made again by the same people.

There has been, for example, no public accounting of how UH's athletic bank account got so separated from reality. We've heard little from those who were supposed to be watching the checkbook from above.

Nor has there been an explanation from on high about why the university felt the need to run so many dodges over the nearly three months before it began to come clean on opening public records. Was it the general counsel's call? The Manoa Chancellor's? Or, a combination thereof?

We do know it wasn't Donovan's, even if his are the only lips that are moving when the subject comes up.

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