The red brake-light procession of the three long lines of vehicles snaking into the University of Hawaii’s main lower campus gate for Saturday night’s men’s volleyball match provided a glimpse of a jackpot in the making.

As drivers handed over a $6 parking fee on a night the Stan Sheriff Center was sold out and Les Murakami Stadium was also in use for baseball, taking up approximately 5,000 parking spots on the upper and lower campus, the math became impressive.

Unless you were the athletic department, where the direct financial return was, well, $0.

Athletics, the lower campus draw on this night, as with most other weekends during the academic year, was projected to realize approximately $75,000 in ticket revenue from Saturday’s match with UC Santa Barbara, officials said. Its take on a percentage of concession sales was estimated to be about $55,000, an official said.

But UH officials said not a penny of the parking revenue realized from events with a turnstile count of 18,771 patrons over Friday and Saturday nights would go into the athletic department’s piggy bank.

Even if you figure, say, 2.5 people per car and factor in those who walked, used alternate transportation or had campus parking stickers, that still leaves an impressive pool of potential parking revenue over the course of a school year that athletics misses out on.

That’s no small change for an athletic department that, as is the case with the vast majority of its peers nationwide, runs in the red. UH has operated at a deficit for nine of the last 10 years.

Nor are there any plans afoot to change the parking equation, UH President David Lassner said before Saturday night’s first serve. Parking, a separate campus entity from athletics, has its own budget responsibilities and financial “struggles,” Lassner said.

To some extent the same is true out at Aloha Stadium, UH’s home for football. That facility is required by the state to generate its own operating expenses and balance its budget with them.

At Aloha Stadium, UH may purchase a limited amount of parking passes that it can then resell to season-ticket holders and donors. UH can also qualify for reductions in expenses by meeting attendance and game scheduling targets. But UH does not share in concessions revenue even though, as a succession of athletic directors have fumed over the years, it is charged for cleanup.

Currently before the Legislature is a request for the state to make a recurring $3 million annual appropriation for athletics — $2.7 million for Manoa and $300,000 for Hilo. The appropriation had been recurring but will have to be renewed annually if it is not returned to a recurring budget item.

While that money has been welcomed and has been essential to reducing the deficit, what is needed here is a wider, more long-term meeting of the minds at the higher levels. One that defines just how competitive an athletic program the state expects and what it can practically afford in that pursuit.

One that also puts a realistic number on what UH athletics means to the state across all platforms — stadium contributions, university benefits, tourism contributions, aspirational benefits, etc. — and how to better monetize it all.

Whether the arrived at figure is $2.7 million, $12.7 million or something in between, it would establish a more sensible and clear base for all concerned, not one that requires the Manoa campus to write checks in varying amounts — $1.9 million one year, $4.2 million the next or $1.7 million — depending on the amount of athletic shortfalls in a given year.

Athletics — and its fans — would recognize at what levels fundraising, ticket sales and sponsorships are required to fill in the gaps without taking money from other areas of the campus each year.

Because, right now, the model for funding athletics is both broken and without much logic.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.