People in Hawaiʻi love a scrappy sports hero.

Coach Soichi Sakamoto, who trained Olympic swimmers in a Maui irrigation ditch because there was no pool.

Ikua Purdy, who famously won the 1910 Cheyenne Roping Championship riding a borrowed horse that had not been trained.

Takamiyama, Hawaiʻi’s first sumo champion who grew up in humble, hardscrabble Happy Valley.

Duke Kahanamoku, who was so fast, when he broke world records, officials were certain the clock wasn’t accurate.

Colt Brennan, may he rest in peace. BJ Penn, may he find peace.

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Bet you still remember names from the team of 12-year-olds who came from a grassless, hard-dirt field in Ewa Beach to win the 2005 Little League World Series.

So many others.

There have been other athletes from Hawaiʻi who have made it big, but we don’t tend to love them as much unless they came up from humble beginnings and struggled their way to the top.

But we are in a new era where Hawaiʻi lawmakers are being asked to hand over $5 million so that the University of Hawaiʻi can pay student athletes with taxpayer money to play for the university, and where local businesses are being encouraged to make individual deals with athletes to promote their products.

Scrappy is no longer valued. Scrappy is for scrubs.

This new pay-for-play era is not the fault of UH or Hawaiʻi athletes or the Hawaiʻi Legislature.

They’re all in the game, but not making the rules.

The NCAA settled a lawsuit this summer brought by several collegiate athletes who said it was unfair for their universities to be making money off their athletic performances and popularity and not share any of that with them.

Okay. That’s reasonable.

But the ramifications of that ruling are troubling.

Schools can pay athletes directly to lure them from playing for other teams. Athletes can market themselves to advertisers as celebrity endorsements.

Say someone has a business making earrings from wana spines or chili-mango glazed mochiko fried chicken.

For $150, they can get a UH football player to wear the urchin earrings in an Instagram post or eat the spicy chicken on TikTok and proclaim it the best fricken chicken ever.

Athletes can even sell their autographs or put a price on what an hour of their time at a meet-and-greet will cost.

The days of just aloha-ing the fans or doing a shout-out because you feel like it, not because you’re getting paid, may be numbered. The whole thing is cringey.

In different times, people worried about appearing to “sell out.” No one wanted to be accused of doing something solely for money and not because there was a deeper, heartfelt or hard-earned connection to the work. Now, selling out is a career plan. Putting a pricetag on one’s endorsement is seen as savvy, not slimy.

There’s so much still to be figured out under these new rules of play, but there’s one thing that can pretty much be assured: A $5 million request from the state this year will not be a one-time thing. It will most likely be more next year, and more every year after that.

It would be inspiring if someone stood up and plainly said, “Nah, we’re not going to treat these kids like contestants on some warped reality show. They’re students before they’re athletes. What they’re going to get out of the University of Hawaiʻi is the opportunity to study hard, earn a degree, and make a good life for themselves. The bonus is that they get to live, learn and play in Hawaiʻi, where the weather is warm, the people are friendly and we still value things like grit and character.”

That kind of talk is for movies. In the real life, Hawaiʻi leaders are going to make the same mistake they always make, thinking Hawaiʻi can keep up with bigger cities and bigger leagues by playing their big games.

It’s not like $5 million is a big chunk of the state’s $20 billion budget. Of course that money could help more people and do more good elsewhere. But it’s not about the amount of money. It’s about another facet of American life slipping from the wholesome era of hard work and the value of an education to fast money, superficial celebrity and the de-stigmatization of selling out.