It's a drop in the University of Hawai'i-Manoa's multimillion-dollar budget bucket. But it's a big symbolic drop.

UH will receive an estimated $4.5 million from its football team's New Year's Day appearance in the Sugar Bowl.

The question is, who gets to spend it? Does the money belong to the football team, the athletics department or the university as a whole?

With the campus' aging facilities in much need of refurbishing, it's only natural that this rare windfall would draw covetous eyes from all corners of the Manoa campus, including those outside the athletics department.

But the money should stay with those most responsible for earning it — the athletics department and student-athletes — and invested wisely.

In fact, they'll already be spending some of it. A portion of the payout will be used for travel, lodging and other expenses for the team, band and UH officials traveling to New Orleans for the big game.

What's left — about $3 million by some estimates — may be tiny compared to UH-Manoa's $284.7 million operating budget for fiscal year 2007, but it's nothing to sneeze at.

The football budget for this year is about $6.4 million, including salaries, scholarships and medical. And the department must pay down several million dollars in debt to balance its books and comply with the university's goal of financial self-sufficiency.

So it's reasonable that when the athletics department makes the effort toward that goal — by fielding an undefeated team that qualifies for the lucrative Bowl Championship Series — it has earned the right to put whatever it can back into the program to keep it successful.

As for how the money is spent, we can only recommend that besides investing in the facilities, some of the revenue should go to scholarships and academic support for student-athletes. That would be the wisest investment of all.

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