Manoa Chancellor Tom Apple said it "isn’t realistic" to expect the financially struggling University of Hawaii athletic program to balance its books, and questioned whether the state is "willing to pay the price" to be successful.
UH finished $2.34 million in the red for the fiscal year that concluded June 30 and has an accumulated net deficit of $11.44 million run up since 2002, according to the latest unaudited figures.
At a campus press conference Monday to discuss the return of athletic director Jim Donovan and arena manager Rich Sheriff after they were cleared of wrongdoing in an investigation of the Stevie Wonder concert debacle, Apple veered from the apparent talking points.
"Everybody is going to tell me not to do this and go off the cuff, but almost all athletic programs run at a deficit," Apple said. "I think there’s 12 across the country, maybe the number is nine or 15 — your Ohio State and your Texas and so on — run in the positive."
UH has finished in the black twice in 11 years, one of them the Sugar Bowl season of 2008. The most recent was 2011.
"We’ve asked our athletics program to break even when no one else does," Apple said. "And no one else has to fly their athletes 3,000 miles for every away game. No one else has to pay teams to come and (play) them. To expect athletics to break even here while maintaining our Division I status and the number of programs we have isn’t realistic."
The athletic department self-generates about 67 percent of the $30.3 million it takes to operate 21 teams. The remainder comes from the state, school and student fees. The subsidies UH receives rank 10th among the 12 schools either currently competing in the Mountain West or that will be there in 2013. UH ranks last among the 10 schools that will be in the Big West in 2013, according to a USAToday report.
"So, we have to decide as a community, not as Manoa, not as even the university, but as the state, what athletics means to us and are we willing to pay the price it takes," Apple said. "And when I say pay the price, that means all the constituencies that have to do with athletics at Hawaii to make sure this program is successful and can compete."
