Imagine hitting megabucks in Las Vegas and what you could do with a check for, say, $2.2 million.

Only instead of using your windfall to take a dream vacation, buy a new house, put the kids — and their kids — through college or purchase an airline, you've got to use the bulk of it, if not all, to pay off the interest on maxed-out credit cards.

Welcome to new University of Hawai'i athletic director Jim Donovan's world, where the windfall has already spent much of itself.

UH received notice from the Western Athletic Conference that come the end of June, it will receive $4,385,555 for its appearance in the Jan. 1 Sugar Bowl, its share of the school's biggest athletic bonanza.

After UH pays its bowl expenses — transportation, hotels, food, etc. — that could mean $2.2 million or so.

The biggest payout to a non-Bowl Championship Series signatory school in history should buy plenty of long-dreamed and much-needed improvements. It could enhance UH's competitiveness across the board by renovating facilities, raising coaches' salaries, expanding recruiting budgets, reaching gender equity, buying overdue equipment.

Instead, much of it, if not all, will have to go to bail out the pools of accumulated red ink brought about by years of poor fiscal operation. Without the Sugar Bowl money, we're told UH could run an athletic department deficit of $1 million this year. That is in addition to the $4.4 million accumulated net deficit over the past five years.

At WAC rival Boise State, the net proceeds from the Broncos' 2007 Fiesta Bowl victory over Oklahoma is a visible statement of the intention to get back to the BCS. They have injected more than $2 million into the renovation and expansion of Bronco Stadium. And, no, they aren't dumping the blue Smurf Turf.

Because the Broncos aren't drowning in accumulated red ink, they are slapping up luxury boxes, club seats and expanding the press box, all calculated to boost the bottom line and competitiveness. Oh, and they still had $500,000 to give to the academic side.

Meanwhile, at UH there is the struggle just to get out from under mounting debt. Which brings up these questions: How do you manage to go hundreds of thousands of dollars in the hole when your team has a once-in-a-lifetime football season? If your average home football attendance (41,325) hits a 23-year high, how can you not, at the very least, balance your books without the bowl money?

Yet, we're told UH is pegged to finish the current fiscal year that closes June 30 with a deficit without the aid of the Sugar Bowl bucks. That's not counting the net accumulated deficit. In financial terms, if UH athletics was a country, it would be Burundi.

The arrival of the BCS money should mean building for the future. Instead, at UH it is time to pay the piper for the shortcomings of the past.

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