Earlier this week the University of Hawaii athletic department gleefully did something it hadn’t managed in a while — reduced the amount of red ink for its budget projections.
Instead of the forecast of a possible $2.5 million deficit for the current fiscal year, the improving bottom line in football allowed officials to peg it at $2.2 million-$2.4 million.
“For the Nevada-Las Vegas game we took in about $200,000 more than in previous games,” athletic director David Matlin said.
The 28,729 on hand that night marked the largest Aloha Stadium crowd since the 2014 opener against Washington. Now, on the heels of a road upset of Air Force, a victory over New Mexico tonight in front of a crowd that UH and stadium officials say could reach 30,000 would do even more for the bottom line.
Getting past the Lobos, a team the Rainbow Warriors haven’t beaten since 1991, would keep UH in bowl contention and a lot more. At 4-4 (3-1 Mountain West), the ‘Bows need three victories in the five remaining games to assure both bowl eligibility and a winning season for the first time since 2010.
For all the one-game-at-a-time talk, the quietly whispered dream scenario in Manoa is a meaningful showdown with nationally ranked Boise State at Aloha Stadium come Nov. 12.
That requires a victory over New Mexico. And, then, there is division leader San Diego State on the road, no small undertaking when Donnel Pumphrey is packing the ball.
Football drives the financial train at UH and its success is where the biggest leaps, if they are to come, can be made in closing the gap on solvency. That is something that has eluded the department the past five years as Friday’s announcement of a $3.24 million deficit for the recently completed 2016 fiscal year underlined.
In that pool of red ink was approximately $830,000, officials said, the cost of buying out the previous coaching staff after attendance hit its lowest ebb in 40 years in Halawa.
Last season’s basketball showing helped reduce the deficit from $4,235,281 in fiscal 2015, but football is where major progress can be made, not only at the gate but in sponsorships, donations and media rights.
Speaking of the latter, top executives from Connecticut-based Charter Communications, which owns the local pay-per-view and TV rights to UH athletics, are scheduled to be at the game.
UH is not alone in its financial struggles, of course. New Mexico earlier this month reported a $1.54 million deficit, its seventh in the past nine years, according to the Albuquerque Journal. And, that’s at a school where men’s basketball annually draws an average of 20,000 per game, the football team went to its first bowl in eight years and they don’t have to pay travel subsidies.
In its most recent (2015) report, the NCAA said just 24 athletic programs in the 120-plus member Football Bowl Subdivision “reported positive net revenues for the 2014 fiscal year.”
As a Stadium Authority member put it at Thursday’s meeting, “Everything gets better when UH wins.”
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
