Financially, Bruins Will Be Happy to Settle for a Tie : Aloha Bowl: Playing in the Hawaii game brings prestige, but it’s an expensive proposition.

Many UCLA supporters will remember today’s Aloha Bowl as Terry Donahue’s farewell game. The Bruins’ financial department, however, will remember it for a different reason.

“I would just say that playing in the Aloha Bowl is not a very profitable situation,” said Steve Salm, a UCLA associate athletic director in charge of business and finance. “And, that would be an understatement.”

That’s because UCLA will be lucky to break even, despite the Aloha Bowl’s $750,000 payout. When a Troy Aikman-led UCLA team played in the Aloha Bowl in 1987, the Bruins made $15,000. But this year UCLA was required to buy 7,500 tickets at $28 each.

“We hope to sell 500 tickets,” Salm said. “I talked to my colleague at Kansas and he felt the same way. This is a tough game to make any money from.”

Most of UCLA’s money for the Aloha Bowl has been spent on travel, housing and food. The university sent a full contingent from its football program, including 103 football players, 12 coaches and seven trainers and their families, and the band.

“Because the game is played on Christmas, it’s hard to travel and play without taking families,” Salm said.

He added that the only way UCLA can make money will be if the expense budget drawn for the game is overestimated, which is unlikely.

“The thing is that when you put a budget together, you can always count on surprise expenses,” Salm said. “For example, we can have a hotel bill run higher than expected, or a food bill run too much. It’s always something. Before the team even left for Hawaii, we had to buy a video-equipment machine that we didn’t count on and that ran us a few thousand dollars.”

Another expense factor that hurts UCLA is that the Aloha Bowl requires each team to arrive at least six days before the game.

“Playing in a major bowl like the Rose, Cotton or Fiesta is a major factor in the whole life of a university,” Salm said. “The people at the Aloha Bowl are not stupid. They know having teams come in and making them stay extra days, will boost tourism and hopefully bring more money to the game.”

Salm said the real advantage of participating in the game is prestige and exposure.

“It’s important to play in a bowl game because it does help recruiting and your program benefits from the extra two weeks of practice time for next season,” he said.

“In the case of the Aloha Bowl, we have to make profit secondary. Of course, we would like to make money or break even, but it is just too difficult to really do so.”