The University of Wisconsin Athletic Board's finance committee unanimously approved a spending authority for athletics of $83.7 million on Tuesday, which includes no ticket increases, for the 2008-09 budget. The budget, with a positive net margin of $43,805, goes to the full board for approval on Friday.

The approved budget included about $730,000 in cuts from the budget that was initially proposed at last month's finance committee meeting.

UW associate athletic director John Jentz told the board some of the most difficult decisions had to do with capital projects.

At the start of the budget process, requests for capital projects came to about $13 million and only $4.5 million were included in the final budget, including replacing the basketball court at the Kohl Center and work on the soccer field and bleachers at the McClimon Complex.

Jentz said the facilities staff meets with each of the coaching staffs to assess capital needs and then decisions are made about what can be fit into the budget.

The athletic department has a long-range facilities master plan that it is trying to make a reality, which includes projects such as a new indoor practice facility for the hockey teams. None of the projects on the master plan is official yet, Jentz emphasized.

"Right now, we're just trying to set the table financially," Jentz said when asked about a timetable for the hockey facility. "We have a facilities and financial master plan committee that's trying to work on that right now, to crunch numbers and see what we can absorb and how quick of a timetable."

The growth rate for this budget is 3.55 percent, excluding a change in tuition remissions. That's below a campus guideline of 3.7 percent and essentially half of the growth rate from the previous year.

Costs for the 23 sports actually decreased 1 percent in a bit of self-imposed belt tightening by the athletic department. Most of the cuts came from support services and not the direct funding of sports.

Jentz said there was no mandate among sports to cut expenses from the previous year, just a department-wide effort to contain expenses.

"It was good to know the sports feel like they're where they need to be at," Jentz said. "They weren't asking for more overall. ... We feel really good that they've got the major components they need to be nationally competitive.

"So, hopefully, from this point going forward, it's just accounting for inflation and the blips in the schedule and things like that."

Jentz did not categorize the cost-containment efforts as severe, at this point.

"We're trying to control the rate of growth, because there are always new ideas, new thoughts, that could potentially benefit sports across the board," he said. "At this point, we're saying, 'Let's slow down a little bit.' It's not painful at this point. It's just preparing for the long term."

Asked if cuts could become painful in the near future, Jentz said not if the fan support continues at current rates, with sold-out stadiums.

Jentz is cognizant of the overwhelming support of the fans, which is why efforts were made not to increase ticket prices. About 72 percent of the total revenue is directly attributable to the fans with ticket sales (32 percent) and gifts (21 percent) making up the biggest chunks. But even conference money (20 percent) could be indirectly attributed to fans.

"The conference revenue and multimedia (8 percent) are kind of guaranteed revenue," Jentz said. "We know we're going to get that next year, but even that comes indirectly, (from) the fans, to the sponsors, it eventually comes from (fans). The other 72 percent comes directly from fans' pockets to our bank account."

UW football tickets, at $39 for next season, are projected to rank eighth in the Big Ten Conference.

"We're not concerned from a revenue standpoint, assuming all this revenue that comes from fans continues," Jentz said of the future. "If we ever got to the day where we weren't selling out facilities, yeah, then we've got some hard decisions to make.

"We have no reason to believe we need to cut costs because we're going to lose revenue, at this point. It's just, we're trying to prepare, we're trying to open up room to account for more expenses down the line."