Ranked second in the polls prior to Sunday's loss to Miami and third nationally in attendance, the University of Louisville’s women’s basketball program is nonetheless the No. 1 source of red ink in the school's athletic department.

No other team exceeds the $3.8 million deficit women’s basketball showed last season. Despite record revenues and a memorable run to the NCAA’s Final Four, the 2017-18 Cardinals generated fewer dollars than coach Jeff Walz was paid in salary, bonuses and benefits.

With rare exceptions, this is how it works in high-level women’s hoops. Universities bank on women’s basketball to enhance their gender equity profiles, to build brand awareness and to raise banners.

Honor without profit.

“With the straight-line economics of that sport, you may scratch your head,” Louisville athletic director Vince Tyra said. “But now that I’ve been in here 18 months, the portfolio and the brand has a lot of value when you are talking to corporate sponsors, when you are talking to licensees that represent our marks, and also to Adidas. They have great appreciation for what happens in these sports. All sports.

“... Whether it’s tangible to the income statement, we believe it is tangible to the overall athletic department.”

PACKING THEM IN:Louisville-Connecticut crowd sets women's basketball record

Like many major conference schools, Louisville relies on football and men’s basketball to generate enough cash to help fund those sports that require subsidy. Unlike most of its peers, however, the women’s basketball program attracts a large and loyal following and has demonstrated promising growth potential.

On pace for a ninth consecutive season among the five top draws in the women’s game, a distinction shared only by the University of Tennessee, Louisville’s announced home attendance averages 9,690 and trails only South Carolina (11,070) and Iowa State (9,871). The 17,023 who turned out last month when the Cardinals defeated Connecticut was the largest crowd of the season for women’s basketball.

Significantly, Walz says, it is no longer necessary to flood the market with free tickets in order to persuade people to show up.

“Have we really cut back in the last eight-nine years on the giveaways? Yes,” Walz said. “There were games in the past where you might give out 5,000 free tickets to get people to come. We don’t do that anymore ...

“(Connecticut) wasn’t a ‘Pack The House’ promotion. It wasn’t 10,000 free tickets out there. People came and wanted to watch the game. I take pride in that. Our program takes pride in that (and) our players.”

When Walz took over the program in 2007, its home attendance averaged 3,104 and its reported revenues for the previous year totaled just $115,621. Attendance has more than tripled during Walz’ tenure and revenues had grown nearly 14-fold by last season, to $1,610,281.

Whether those revenues can rise fast enough to offset expenses that totaled $5,431,274 last season is more of a theoretical question than an active concern. Neither Tyra nor Walz view profit as a priority for women’s basketball and both suspect raising prices could result in smaller crowds.

Moreover, finding a formula that fills both arenas and coffers has proved to be an elusive equation. Though South Carolina led the nation in attendance last season, it did so while running a deficit of nearly $5.9 million. Though Connecticut and Tennessee have sometimes shown financial surpluses in women’s basketball, the NCAA’s most recent accounting (from 2016) shows none of the 129 Football Bowl Subdivision schools generated more revenues than expenses in women’s basketball.

Median shortfall: $2,321,000.

“Expectations about profitability do not exist about any other sport in the NCAA context,” said Lynn Holzman, the NCAA’s vice president of women’s basketball. “The realist in me says there’s a recognition within women’s basketball of the need to be fiscally responsible, to find ways to be sustainable. (But) there’s value associated with it that’s not about dollars.”

Herein lies the battle former Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich started fighting more than two decades ago. Committed to the spirit of Title IX as well as the letter of the federal law that would mandate gender equity in athletics, Jurich argued (against strenuous opposition) that investing in women’s athletics was not only the right thing to do but would show a return on investment as former athletes became parents, executives and benefactors of alma mater.

Jurich’s visionary sales pitch was well-intentioned and often persuasive. It did not, however, balance the books.

“Women’s basketball is not profitable,” Tyra said. “... Even with the attendance we have, we’d have to be at pretty significant price increases, which I don’t foresee. Outside of those big supporters that you see on the floor, we don’t have seat donations. There are only so many levers in women’s basketball.”

While Louisville’s men’s basketball program reported media rights revenues of $3,384,597 last season, that revenue stream does not exist for the women’s program. Though the last two Women’s Final Fours have sold out, the NCAA makes no distribution to those schools or conferences that participate in the women’s tournament.

By contrast, NCAA distributions to the Atlantic Coast Conference prompted $24.4 million in paydays to member schools in 2017 based on their showings in the men’s tournament.

The distribution disparity is largely a function of television ratings and the rights fees that follow. While the NCAA men’s championship game drew a 9.2 rating and nearly 16 million viewers last spring, the women’s title game generated a 2.0 rating and was watched by roughly 3.5 million.

Still, anything that can attract millions of eyeballs for hours at a time has its advantages. And as Holy Cross economist Victor Matheson told Fox Business in 2017, Connecticut’s women’s basketball team has probably generated more headlines than the rest of that university combined.

When Walz led Louisville to the Final Four in 2013, he asked then-Louisville President James Ramsey what that achievement did for the university.

"'Hey, you’re on national TV for two hours, talking about Louisville, talking about how great Louisville is,'" Walz remembers Ramsey saying. "'I couldn’t pay for a two-hour commercial. And so you might not bring in as much revenue in ticket sales, but there’s a lot of residual that comes back.'"

Jenny Sawyer, Louisville’s executive director of admissions, is suspicious of the supposed correlation between athletics and enrollment decisions. But as a women’s basketball season ticket holder of long standing, she is confident of a connection between the team’s success and economic development.

“How many people come to women’s basketball games over the course of a season that that’s the thing that got them comfortable with coming downtown?” she asked. “They would never come downtown or have the money to come down for a men’s game or a concert.”

Though many Cardinals supporters attend both men’s and women’s games, the women’s crowd feels more like a family gathering and less like a cocktail party, presumably because the price structure makes parents more likely to bring their children along. Early Friday, the lowest-priced ticket available on Ticketmaster for Saturday’s men’s game against Clemson cost $32. Meanwhile, youth tickets to Sunday’s women’s game against Miami were available for $7.

“Part of it is a family of four can go to a women’s basketball game for less than it costs to go to a movie,” Walz said. “So a movie’s two hours, a women’s basketball game is two hours. At times, we’re winning that entertainment dollar."

At times, women’s basketball has been a refuge for cost-conscious Louisville fans who have wearied of controversy and conflict. While dropping her season tickets to the men’s games, Sawyer has retained six seats for the women's.

“Just having 10,000 less people in the Yum Center and the format of the game, I can save an hour to an hour and a half,” she said. “You’re talking cost, you’re talking time, you’re talking the family atmosphere and you’re talking that deep, genuine appreciation from the team and that feeling you get in the arena that your presence is making a difference.”

On her way to work Tuesday, Sawyer was making plans to follow the U of L women to the Final Four in Tampa. Hard to put a price on that.