Even with a strong financial showing in football, it is too soon to say whether the University of Hawai'i athletic department will balance its books for a second consecutive fiscal year, athletic director Herman Frazier said yesterday.

The current fiscal year closes June 30, but Frazier said the financial picture won't take shape until the audit is under way in September.

The athletic department reported a surplus of $7,483 for the last fiscal year, its first finish in the black in five years. However, the athletic department has an unrestricted net deficit of $4.2 million, according to figures provided in the 2006 fiscal year audit.

While a football team that went 11-3 and finished 24th in the coaches' poll surpassed financial projections, Frazier said, "We didn't take in as much money as we anticipated in other sports."

The men's basketball team's revenue was "not good," Frazier said.

Women's volleyball was "probably the same," Frazier said, adding, "baseball was about the same, but you wish there were some larger numbers there."

He said football budget projections "were lowballed" in anticipation that some other programs might not meet their projections.

Frazier said the process of finalizing numbers is delayed because "65 percent of our revenue ... (doesn't) come in until this last quarter." He said outstanding revenue includes NCAA and Western Athletic Conference distributions.

The WAC figure includes UH's share of Boise State's Bowl Championship Series appearance fee, which Frazier said would exceed "a half million."

UH also received a $250,000 football cancellation fee from Michigan State, which was contracted to play the Warriors Nov. 24, 2007 at Aloha Stadium.

Frazier said he has not yet determined whether to apply the cancellation fee to the current or following fiscal year.

"We are always trying to get our budget to be zero," Frazier said. "That's our goal again, to finish zero or a dollar to the good."

Meanwhile, it appears UH is on track to surpass 20,000 in football season-ticket sales following a record dip.

"We're shooting for higher numbers than we had the last couple of years," Frazier said.

For that to happen, UH would need to collect full payment from the 815 who pledged to buy 2,900 new season tickets. Each made a $50 deposit.

"We'll continue to push those folks to close those particular deals that are still open," Frazier said.

UH sold 18,125 season tickets last season, the fewest in nearly 25 years. This year, between season-ticket renewals (17,000) and those requested by depositors (2,900), officials said they could have 19,900 before sales are opened up to new customers, faculty and staff.

"I think that indications are we're in pretty good shape," Frazier said.

He declined to estimate how many season tickets the school expects to sell.

Reach Stephen Tsai at stsai@honoluluadvertiser.com and Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com.