Say what you will about the Bowl Championship Series.

Joke how the "C" in BCS is really unnecessary and all that.

But at the University of Hawai'i, the BCS is warmly regarded as a financial life preserver.

Back-to-back BCS appearances — first by Boise State and then by the Warriors this past season — have been the difference between balancing the annual budget and adding more losses to the $4.4 million accumulated deficit the past two fiscal years.

Now, if you are UH, is it too much to hope there is a third BCS life preserver on the horizon?

Probably, but that's the dangerous financial corner UH finds itself painted into — in red, of course — even as the 2008-'09 fiscal year began yesterday.

Ideally, a return to the BCS by UH would be new athletic director Jim Donovan's most fervent wish, not to mention that of the fans. But given the degree of difficulty in the 2008 football schedule coming up, it is a whopper of a fantasy to be sure. More likely, Donovan would gladly settle for somebody, anybody, in the Western Athletic Conference cracking the BCS and the split of another lucrative payday that would mean.

That it has come to that already is a sign — merely the latest and biggest one to be sure — of the financial straits the athletic department is in. When it takes the largest payout to a non-BCS signatory member in history just to have a shot to balance your budget, there is something wrong. OK, a lot.

And that is what we're told it has taken — approximately $2.2 million from UH's Sugar Bowl payout of $4,385,555 after expenses — for UH to project a balanced annual budget for the fiscal year that closed Monday. Final returns are pending an outside audit.

Without the windfall from a 12-1 season, UH would have incurred some serious debt. As if the $4.4 million accumulated net deficit over the previous five years wasn't sobering enough.

Which brings up the question of how an athletic program that took 11-3 and 12-1 football seasons to the bank the past two years could be struggling that much financially? How, indeed, do you attract a 23-year high in average home football attendance (41,325) and not be able, at the very least, to balance your books without a BCS windfall?

Worse yet, if the bottom line is that tight in a once-in-a-lifetime season, what happens if, heaven forbid, you suffer a down year?

As UH begins work on turning around the financial fortunes of its athletic program, Donovan and staff clearly have their work cut out for them.

Meanwhile, others should have some explaining to do.

Somewhere along the way there needs to be an accounting of how this was allowed to happen and what the marching orders are to be in order to assure a more solvent future.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.