The University of Hawaii didn’t take in enough from individual ticket sales for its football game against Tulane to "even cover the cost of playing at (Aloha) Stadium," that night, athletic director Jim Donovan said.

From late August, when individual game tickets first went on sale, through the Nov. 26 date of the game, just 1,856 individual game tickets totaling $54,265 were sold for the Tulane game, according to unaudited UH figures. Stadium costs run about $90,000 per date for UH.

The poor turnout for Tulane, which drew 21,542 through the turnstiles for the penultimate game in a 6-7 season, was among the most revealing contributions to a nearly $1.2 million shortfall in football revenue for the 2011 season that could drive an impending department deficit beyond $1.5 million for the 2012 fiscal year that ends June 30.

Tulane was a late substitute for Boise State, which left the Western Athletic Conference for the Mountain West.

With football coming off a 10-4 season and a share of the WAC championship and picked by conference coaches and media as the preseason favorite, UH officials had hoped to come close to breaking even in 2012 despite the expected loss of nearly $1 million in funds due to penalties for leaving the WAC.

Because of the optimism over football, Donovan said the sport was originally budgeted to bring in $5 million in ticket revenue, a nearly 4 percent increase over 2010.

By early November the projection was lowered to $4.5 million and an athletic department deficit of $982,798 was forecast largely due to the drop in season-ticket sales and some disappointing early losses.

However, continuing losses and growing fan apathy resulted in unaudited revenue of just $3,843,542, UH said. That is the lowest total in more than eight years and contributed to the departure of head coach Greg McMackin. McMackin, who had one year left on his five-year contract, received a $600,000 settlement.

The 20,959 season tickets sold were the fewest in five seasons. And just 31,253 tickets were sold to individual games, slightly more than Rainbow Wahine volleyball, which sold 29,713 tickets to individual games.

"The numbers I’ve seen (for individual football games) were especially alarming," Donovan said. "The amount we sold for the Brigham Young game (5,872), for example, had to be our worst for a BYU game in history."

Overall, UH attendance in 2011 averaged 28,194, the lowest in six years.

UH officials are hoping the arrival of Norm Chow will help revive sagging financial fortunes. Already, officials said, pledges for new season tickets and booster club memberships point to about $200,000 in new business.

Meanwhile, Rainbow Wahine volleyball produced $809,671 in ticket revenue, an 8 percent increase above 2010.

"We’re very pleased with how volleyball went this year," Donovan said of the 31-2 (14-0 WAC) Rainbow Wahine.

Although season-ticket sales dropped slightly, head coach Dave Shoji said, "I think as the season went on people realized we had a pretty good team and they came out to support us. I think, first of all, Hawaii loves volleyball and, second, they love teams that are winning and that explains, maybe, those numbers."