AUSTIN — Atop a granite pedestal near the offices of the nation's wealthiest athletic department, a bronze statue stands inside the University of Texas' Royal-Memorial Stadium. It's cast in the image of UT benefactor B.J. “Red” McCombs, whose chiseled likeness greets visitors with a smile and a “Hook 'em Horns” hand sign.

But on a couple of football Saturdays last fall, the living, breathing Red McCombs was nowhere to be found. He kept sending his checks, just like the other donors who continue to keep the Longhorns' sports colossus awash in record revenues.

When it came to the games, however, McCombs decided he no longer could bear to watch. After dominating the major college athletics landscape for much of the century's first decade, UT's highest-profile teams have spent the past three years lingering in mediocrity.

And that's left McCombs — as well as legions of disenchanted fans — wondering why he's not receiving a better return on his investment.

“It's mind-boggling that we're not winning,” said McCombs, a San Antonio businessman and longtime UT booster who's donated more than $89 million to the school. “And the Longhorn nation isn't happy about it.”

So far, that displeasure has not affected the Longhorns' bottom line.

According to a database compiled by the U.S. Education Department, the University of Texas led the country in sports revenue in 2012 for the fourth consecutive year.

Without any student fees, school subsidies or state funds, UT's athletic department generated $163.3 million last year, $21.3 million more than second-place Ohio State.

The Longhorns — who reported $129.2 million in expenses and transferred more than $5.4 million to the university — were one of only 23 programs nationwide to report more revenue than expenses.

The surplus is entirely due to football and men's basketball, which combined to generate a profit of $87.8 million last year. That allowed the department as a whole to cover the losses of all the other sports combined, as well as the average gameday operating expenses of $22,190 per student-athlete.

As expected, much of that expense leans toward football, men's basketball and baseball, where 53 percent of the expense goes toward games involving just 24.5 percent of UT's student-athletes. The range runs from $185,724 of gameday expenses per basketball player to just $2,913 for members of the crew team.

But while the department's financial coffers have overflowed, victory totals have not. There have been some highlights — national championships last year in men's golf and women's volleyball, and a trip to the Women's College World Series in softball this month — but not in the major sports.

Mack Brown's football team, which won more games than any program in the country from 1998 to 2009, is 22-16 since losing the national championship game three years ago.

Rick Barnes' men's basketball team, which reached the NCAA Sweet 16 five times from 2002 to '08, hasn't returned since, and just completed its first losing season in 15 years. The women's basketball team (which operated at a $2 million deficit) finished next-to-last in the Big 12.

And Augie Garrido's baseball team, which made the College World Series a nation-best seven times from 2000-11, has missed the NCAA tournament two years in a row and just finished in last place of its conference for the first time since 1956.

DeLoss Dodds, the 73-year-old athletic director who oversaw both UT's rise to national prominence and its recent descent, said he's disappointed by how his teams have fared in the past few years. But he insists the lull is temporary.

“Everything in athletics is cyclical,” Dodds said. “We were good for a long time, and we're going to be good again. We're going to get back to that.”

Wolves circling

The last time Dodds endured a cycle this rough was in the late 1990s, when he replaced the head coaches in each of his three marquee men's sports.

The three men he hired all enjoyed periods of extended — and in some cases, unprecedented — success.

But now, each of the three has reasons to wonder if his run is over.

Dodds said he has faith in Brown, Barnes and Garrido to turn things around. UT President Bill Powers has been unequivocal in his support for Dodds, and last December specifically gave a vote of confidence to Brown.

Still, the reality of modern college athletics — in which even coaches of winning programs are fired on a regular basis — makes it clear that changes might take place if the Longhorns don't start winning.

Even McCombs, who like UT's other big-name donors is considered an ally of the Longhorns' current coaches, said the wolves can't be held off forever.

“The coaches who are there have earned their right to be there,” said McCombs, who's given UT $50 million to start a business school, $30 million for the MD Anderson Cancer Center, $6 million to renovate the football stadium and $3 million to build a softball field. “But that's only going to last so long. How long? I don't know.”

Each of UT's three top-paid coaches is trying to rediscover a winning formula that once made his program a national power.

In football, Brown's teams won at least 10 games in 10 consecutive years, won a Bowl Championship Series national title after the 2005 season, and finished in the Top 10 seven times from 2001-09.

But in 2010, the Longhorns imploded. Plagued by an emotional hangover from losing the previous season's national title game, a drop-off in talent and uninspired coaching, they finished with a 5-7 record, their worst mark since 1997.

Brown responded by cleaning out his coaching staff, hiring two new coordinators, five new assistants and a new strength coach.

After showing moderate improvement the past two seasons, Brown created a player personnel department — something elite programs such as Alabama have had for years.

In part, the latest move was a response to a series of recruiting mistakes by a UT juggernaut that once dominated that area.

For instance, the past two Heisman Trophy winners — Baylor's Robert Griffin III and Texas A&M's Johnny Manziel — showed interest in playing quarterback at UT, but the Longhorns didn't offer either player a scholarship at that position.

“Sometimes things need to be exposed before you can fix them,” Brown said. “They were exposed, and we fixed them.”

Brown, 61, repeatedly has pointed toward 2013 as the year the results of those changes will show themselves. Many of UT's most talented players are now upperclassmen, and the Longhorns will be expected to improve upon last season's 9-4 finish.

Brown makes $5.3 million per year with annual raises of $100,000 on a contract that runs through 2020. But his most recent extension included a provision that the school can buy out his contract for only $2.75 million. Still, he said he doesn't feel any more pressure to win this year than usual.

“I would say excitement more than pressure,” Brown said. “We had to go through a process here of getting it back, and I think we are headed back in the right direction and we have shown that over the last two years. And I think we'll see more progress this year.”

Self-inflicted damage

Brown at least can point to more tangible reasons for hope than Barnes can. After coaching UT's men's basketball team to its best seven-year stretch in history, the Longhorns are trending indisputably downward.

Despite the presence of five McDonald's high-school All-Americans and six eventual NBA draft picks, UT has won only one NCAA tournament game in the past five years. This season, the Longhorns missed the tournament and finished with a losing record for the first time since 1998.

Like many other programs nationwide, UT has been affected by its most talented players leaving school early for the NBA. But Barnes, 58, who makes $2.5 million per season on a contract that runs through 2017, acknowledged he hasn't done enough with the players he's had.

“We knew we had to look at some things we needed to change,” Barnes said.

The changes might not be for the better.

The Longhorns will enter next season without the top three scorers from last year's team, as Myck Kabongo declared for the NBA draft, and Julien Lewis and Sheldon McClellan both are transferring. And after pulling in one blue-chip recruit after another for years, Barnes didn't sign a McDonald's All-American in his latest class.

The fans have noticed the team's lack of promise. UT averaged a paid home attendance of only 10,945 at the 16,000-seat Erwin Center last season, and the actual crowd usually was much smaller than that. The paid attendance figure counted season ticket holders who didn't show up.

Dodds said he didn't blame the fans for staying home.

“It changes when you win,” Dodds said. “When you win, it fills up. People like winners. We just need to win.”

The same can be said of the baseball team, which made the College World Series as recently as two years ago and has six national titles overall. But now, the winningest program in college baseball history — led by the coach with more victories than anyone in the history of the sport — has missed its second consecutive NCAA tournament.

“I never imagined Texas being in this situation,” Garrido said.

Garrido, 74, makes $1 million per year on a contract that runs through 2015. He said he's committed to fixing what ails the Longhorns, whose struggles have occurred despite continually owning one of the nation's top pitching staffs.

Their inability to score runs killed them in each of the past two seasons, and Garrido said that problem is due to mistakes in both coaching and recruiting.

“The difficulties we've encountered are self-inflicted,” Garrido said.

'Win 'em all'

To a degree, that summarizes the entire UT athletic program. But UT still has a stable of deep-pocketed donors (for example, the Longhorn Foundation has an annual giving level of $25,000 that covers a student-athlete's tuition, room, board and books for a full year). The Longhorns also have a new sense of stability in the Big 12 and a 20-year, $300 million contract with ESPN for the Longhorn Network, and remain well positioned to stay atop the revenue heap.

Dodds, who is due to receive a $1 million annuity if he's employed by UT in August 2014 and makes a base salary of $700,000 annually, said he has no intentions to walk away until the Longhorns meet his standards. And his standards are simple.

“The expectations are to win 'em all,” Dodds said.

McCombs said that's exactly what the fans and boosters want. And when he returns to the site of his smiling statue this fall, he'd like nothing more than for the Longhorns to fulfill that desire.

“There is a sense of optimism,” McCombs said. “I just don't know if it's based on much reality.”