For years the University of Hawaii has looked to its most lucrative athletic teams to help underwrite their financially challenged brothers and sisters.

Football and, to a lesser extent, Rainbow Wahine volleyball and occasionally men’s basketball and volleyball, helped pick up the check for golf, swimming, tennis, track, water polo, etc.

Now, in a sign of just how austere times have become for the school’s struggling athletic programs, UH President David Lassner is proposing an additional tact, waving the banner of Title IX to ask the Legislature to pitch in a combined $3.6 million annually for Manoa and Hilo.

It is the first time in more than a decade UH has publicly invoked Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 as a direct appeal for money beyond state general funds, and it comes amid the likelihood Manoa’s deficit this fiscal year will go deeper than its initial $1.5 million projection.

In his operating budget proposals for the fiscal biennium 2015-17 presented to the Board of Regents this week, Lassner is requesting $3 million for Manoa athletics and $600,000 for Hilo sports each year.

This is in addition to the approximately $2.3 million in state general funds Manoa receives annually and $2.8 million in direct institutional support given to Hilo.

Under "justification" for the requests, the proposals say, "this request will ensure compliance with Title IX requirements that no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal funds."

When athletics has been challenged to run itself "more like a business," its are-you-kidding-us retort has usually been that it cannot run as a bottom-line enterprise because, as long as it fields a football team, it must balance out the 105-man roster with an appropriate number of opportunities for women, even if most of those sports don’t pay for themselves.

In addition, it must operate some insolvent men’s teams due to conference requirements.

Lassner told the Star-Advertiser’s Nanea Kalani, "The faculty and some of the students don’t like to see ‘their’ money go toward athletics. We can’t really invest more in athletics. I think everybody agrees with that. And we don’t want to shut the programs down, and so we’re looking for help."

Lassner said, "This is something we think the community supports and believes in and takes great pride in. UH Manoa Division I athletics is a big deal to Hawaii. And we’re looking for help from the community, inclusive of the Legislature — from other than our current general-fund budget, and increases in tuition or cutting educational programs. We’re looking for help from outside — it could be community donations, philanthropists, long-term potentially a new relationship with the stadium, and obviously, the Legislature."

Last month Lassner vowed to seek financial aid for athletics. Pinning those hopes to Title IX now underscores the desperation.

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