UH athletics worth defending

Hawaii football fans were disappointed this year to the point that most didn’t bother to pass through the turnstiles at Aloha Stadium as the University of Hawaii Warriors’ season came to a close.

A pitiful performance on the gridiron, combined with the Stevie Wonder concert fiasco and a larger athletic department deficit than projected, all has the UH-Manoa chancellor and others wondering whether a full-scale athletic program is worth it all.

It is, for many reasons.

Financial statements presented Wednesday to the UH regents showed that the athletic department increased spending by $3 million while revenues dropped by about $1.5 million for fiscal 2012.

Much of the revenue loss resulted from football ticket revenue sinking $1.2 million less than expected, due partly to UH having to pay expenses related to switching from the Western Athletic Conference to the Mountain West in football, and other sports to the non-football Big West.

The department’s accumulated net deficit has grown to $11.3 million.

UH Chancellor Tom Apple pointed out that those travel-subsidy expenses are unique, but a university running red in athletics is not. Barely half of the roughly 120 teams in Division I-A, the top-level programs that include UH, turned a profit from football from 2004 through 2010, according to a financial breakdown by the NCAA. Those that turned a profit gained a net total of $9.1 million, while those on the down side lost a median $2.9 million.

"Whether we want a strong, vibrant athletics program that can compete at Division I-A," Apple said, is "a discussion to have, and not just as a university but as a state, because it is the only game in town."

Indeed. The reality is that many of Honolulu’s most important and productive residents are reluctant to live in a place without an active venue of major sports, preferably professional; UH football is the closest game in the islands.

The presence of top-level college football has other dividends as well: attraction of students.

A recent study found that football programs that finished a season in the Associated Press Top 20 received 2.5 percent more applications the following year, and the national champion team received 7 percent to 8 percent more.

One study says a successful football team produced a higher graduation rate and alumni giving rate, what a separate researcher reaching the same result called "football chicken soup." Something like school spirit being good for the academic soul.

UH went 0-12 in the 1998 season under then-head coach Fred von Appen, but the Warriors rebounded in the following nine years under June Jones, culminating at a Sugar Bowl. That level of national recognition and television exposure has to result positively in attracting potential students and alumni donations.

Ben Jay, named last week as UH’s new athletic director, has an impressive record of financial expertise and will be expected to limit the loss of revenue to a natural, but short-lived, response to the kind of season just ended on the field.

A creative, robust business plan — for both the short and long terms — will be as critical a component for the UH athletics program as will be coaching toward winning seasons.