We’re at that point on the calendar when major college athletic programs eagerly await cashing their biggest checks of the year.

It is the end of the academic and fiscal years when seven and eight-figure disbursement checks are passed out by the conferences. At the so-called Power Five conference schools, that means $18 million-$31 million per member. Even in the other, less well-heeled Football Bowl Subdivision conferences, such as the Mountain West, it can be a tidy sum numbering in the multi-millions, $9.4 million at Boise State, $4.9 at Fresno State, $4.3 million at Nevada etc.).

Then, there is the University of Hawaii.

UH said it expects to cash a check of approximately $1,544,000 from the Mountain West, where its football team competes, and another $300,000 or so from the Big West, where most of the reminder of its teams call home.

Be assured UH is glad to have every nickel of it, which amounts to about six percent of what it takes to operate the 21-team program. That it got this much is in part due to Boise State reaching the Fiesta Bowl and the dollars that have trickled down. 

But a windfall it isn’t. Nor will it allow UH to keep up with much of the MWC, much less the marquee teams it plays over the next few years.

The fact is UH made almost as much from its final full paycheck in the Western Athletic Conference, $1,710,302, in 2011.

In the overall scheme of things it actually fared better back then because it wasn’t paying travel subsidies at the time, which amount to $1.2 million a year now, and it also kept its local TV (Oceanic Cable) rights fees of $2.3 million-$2.5 million.

In the WAC UH was allowed to keep those home TV rights proceeds as well as share in the conference national TV revenue pool. 

But in the MWC it has called home for three seasons now, UH retains the home TV bucks and not a cent of conference TV pot unless all 11 other members have shares exceeding $2.3 million. That has yet to happen and is not likely for years to come.

All the while UH is at the mercy of the conference TV deal when it comes to having network partners select dates or kickoff times, such as the 4:30 p.m. start for the Oct. 31 game with Air Force.

Not that UH is in position to offer a peep of protest. The school had little leverage with the MWC in 2010 when the original deal was made amid a run of seven bowl trips in nine years. Today, after four consecutive losing seasons, it has even less.

Without a football team that goes to bowls, regularly adding to the conference piggy bank or TV ratings, nobody has interest in revisiting the agreement. Without a basketball team that reaches the NCAA?Tournament in a conference that rarely gets at-large tournament berths, there is little to boost its Big West payout.

Meanwhile, the difference is millions that UH’s competition can invest in facilities, coaching salaries and recruiting. Not to mention, beginning Aug. 1, cost of attendance supplements for scholarship athletes.

If you are UH, it isn’t just the grass that might be greener elsewhere.

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