Playing on New Year’s Day on national TV in a major bowl game, long the goal of any big-time football program, sounds like a moneymaker. But with the exposure and prestige comes the harsh reality of the bowl culture. Schools lose money in large part because they are forced to sell millions of dollars worth of tickets and have to absorb the losses if they do not.

The University of Connecticut lost $1,663,560 in its Bowl Championship Series game loss to Oklahoma on Jan.1, according to Mike Enright, associate athletic director for communications. The Huskies, like other Division I-A schools, had to file a report to the NCAA by March 1. The document shows that UConn was required to purchase $3,349,835 worth of tickets but realized only $676,248 from ticket sales. So the school was out $2,673,587 on ticket sales alone.

“[UConn athletic director] Jeff Hathaway and the university were up front and honest in December when we talked about finances and nothing is different now than we thought it would be or that we said it would be,” Enright said. “We said the bowls are not going to make money, but we feel the residual effects of the bowl game are well worth it.”

UConn said Wednesday that it sold about 4,600 tickets, including 2,771 to the general public and the rest for the university’s obligations.

“When we go to the Fiesta Bowl, we received zero tickets free,” Enright said. “Yet we had some internal responsibilities before we could even start a public sale. We had to buy 400 tickets for the band; we had to buy tickets to fulfill corporate sponsorship packages, which generate $7.5 million to the athletic department; we had to fulfill obligations for tickets for coaching staff per contracts and student-athletes’ families. So the number of tickets we sold was 4,600.”

Secondary ticket outlets such as StubHub sold tickets to the game at much cheaper prices, which didn’t help UConn. UConn was selling tickets for $105 to $255. Tickets on the secondary Internet market were plentiful and cheap, as low as $20 to $50. That’s because fans who bought advance tickets to the BCS national championship game Jan. 10 also had to buy tickets to the Phoenix-area Fiesta and Insight bowls, and were dumping tickets to those two games.

There were clearly more than 2,771 UConn supporters at University of Phoenix Stadium that night.