For several seasons now the University of Hawaii’s Rainbow Wahine Softball Stadium has been home to one of the best bargains in college softball.

With an exciting, longball-hitting team and no admission charge, it has been quite a deal.

Probably too good to continue, too.

Unless somebody finds an oil well behind the batting cage — or agrees to forgive the red ink on the budget — free admission is an indulgence UH can ill afford as it joins the Big West Conference next month.

Not only is UH staring at the possibility of a $2 million athletic department deficit when it closes the books on the 2012 fiscal year June 30, it faces added costs in the Big West.

As a condition of joining the conference July 1, UH will be underwriting the costs for a travel squad of 26 to the tune of about $13,000 for each of its Big West opponents coming to Hawaii. "Travel cost sharing" is the operative phrase, although nobody is stepping up to "share" UH’s costs.

Which is undoubtedly why athletic director Jim Donovan said selling tickets for softball is a topic to be discussed with coach Bob Coolen.

"We’re strongly considering it," Donovan said. "I did mention it to him about halfway through the season that it was something that we might have to look at."

Coolen declined comment Thursday until he is informed of the specifics. But, when the issue has come up, Coolen has been, well, predictably cool to the idea in the past. His feeling was that free admission has allowed softball to attract good crowds (UH averaged 563 per game this season in its 1,200-seat stadium) that helped provide a home-field advantage.

Coolen has cited a "curiosity factor" that draws fans on the way to or from baseball who can poke their heads in at softball for free. With a ticket charge, some of that audience goes away.

In a better economic situation you’d like to see UH continue to build its following toward the eventual expansion of its stadium in a couple of years. Unfortunately, dollars are tight and UH is one of a handful of schools that doesn’t charge for regular-season softball.

Among the 10 schools now in the Big West or that will be there with UH, Hawaii is the only one that does not levy a regular-season charge. Seventeen of the teams in the NFCA Top 25 charge for regular-season games, according to research by the Star-Advertiser’s Jason Kaneshiro.

With the exception of UH, the ones that do open the gates free of charge are well-heeled Bowl Championship Series schools: Florida, Georgia, Stanford, Florida State, North Carolina, Syracuse and Louisville.

Under guidelines established by the UH Board of Regents four years ago, the school could charge a maximum of $8 for an adult ticket and up to $50 for a season ticket. But the reality is it would probably have to be a lot cheaper.

"We’d be looking for something very reasonable," Donovan said.

Wahine softball figures to be an attraction in 2013, but maybe not the blue light special it has been.

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