Usually he just watches the football game, but Saturday afternoon Rockne Freitas did something a little different at Aloha Stadium.

He came to watch the fans first.

The University of Hawaii’s acting athletic director stood outside the stadium box office and observed the walk-up ticket sales traffic. Or, in the case of the sparsely attended Boise State game, the severe lack thereof.

What he saw was an absence of demand or lines, just 440 walk-up tickets purchased, UH said. Not enough to inspire hope that the gamble of adding a 13th game against Temple was going to be anything but  a money loser.

So after re-doing the math of the expenses of adding the 13th game, the plug was wisely pulled on the proposed Dec. 7 game against Temple.

It was a sign of the kind of fiscal sanity the department needs. And unlike some other units on campus lately, athletics didn’t have to hire a consultant, factfinders or attorney to arrive at the decision.

What it did was drive the best deal available with Temple, which was going to underwrite its own travel from Philadelphia. Then UH  negotiated with stadium management and others. What officials say they found was a projected loss of between $76,500 and $110,000 on the game.

Pocket change, perhaps, if you are cashing Big East TV checks like Temple. But  a considerable amount if you are UH and already staring at a projected $2 million deficit for the fiscal year that started just four months ago on top of a net accumulated deficit of more than $11.5 million over the past decade.

“I treat the public’s money as I do my own,” Freitas said. “And the numbers on this just wouldn’t work.”

The major reason for adding the game — which Temple requested to enhance its chances of becoming bowl eligible —  was to give UH coaches an additional week to work with the players they will have back next year.

But the immediate cost value benefit just wasn’t there for an athletic department already treading red ink after absorbing the $200,000 loss on the Stevie Wonder fiasco and thousands more in attorney fees and other costs from its aftermath.

A 13th game wasn’t part of the original season-ticket package, and any attempt to charge for it would have been met with hostility by many of the season-ticket holders.

UH is going to have enough trouble getting renewals next year without antagonizing the customer base with a strong-arm approach now.

And the prospect for selling even $10 walk-up seats or pay-per-view for Temple was dismal even if UH managed to win a game down the stretch first. The Owls haven’t much of a fan base here, and coming in with, at best, a 5-6 record to play a sagging home team wasn’t going to set the turnstiles swinging.

If nationally ranked Boise State couldn’t put people in the seats, then Temple sure wasn’t about to and it would have been foolish to try.

For once, here’s a decision about dollars at UH that made sense.

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