MEMPHIS — Bruce Pearl's first year at the University of Tennessee has been golden, and when Mike Hamilton said that to UT's trustees, he wasn't just talking about the team's won-lost record.

UT Athletics Director Mike Hamilton told the UT Board of Trustees on Wednesday that he didn't have the exact numbers but estimated that men's basketball revenues were at least $850,000 more this year than the totals last season.

That included a jump in gross concession sales from $260,000 to between $750,000 and $800,000, while ticket revenues jumped another $350,000 to $400,000 gross.

At the same time, the women's basketball program, playing high-profile home games against teams like Connecticut, LSU and Texas, brought in about $450,000 more than last season in concessions and tickets.

The increased revenues were a welcome addition for UT's athletics departments, which brought in $69.2 million in revenues in fiscal year 2005 but struggled after borrowing $1.3 million to buy out former basketball coach Buzz Petersen's contract, among other things.

It was money "which we greatly needed when we started out with one less home (football) game," Hamilton told the trustees who were gathered at UT's Health Science Center for the first day of their annual winter meeting.

A presentation about UT athletics by Hamilton and UT Women's Athletic Director Joan Cronan highlighted the afternoon session.

It was prompted, among other things, by questions about athletics' razor-thin margins that arose after the Petersen loan last summer.

That was followed in December by Hamilton saying the athletics program was reaching a "tipping point" at which it might no longer be financially able to field top-20 teams in 11 different men's and women's sports and still give millions of dollars in support back to the university.

Adding to the questions was a statement by the president-elect of UT Knoxville's Faculty Senate that the university is subsidizing athletics.

Cronan opened the presentation by telling trustees that "our goal, every day, is to have the best athletic programs in the United States" for both men and women.

But she also said that, at the same time, "we must be financially responsible."

She noted that UT was the highest-ranking public university in the Excellence in Athletics Cup rankings, which measures athletics and academics, finishing behind Duke and Stanford.

Both Hamilton and Cronan told the trustees that UT's goals were not only to graduate students and win titles, but to do those things while remaining self-supporting.

To achieve that, Hamilton told the group, "it's important, vital ... to be successful in football and basketball."

He added later, "We must be successful in men's and women's basketball and football."

Those three sports carry the athletics department and also provide the more than $10 million in benefits to the university, ranging from $1.375 million in scholarships for nonathletes to providing 16,000 season football tickets to UT's Alumni and Development Office to help with its fund-raising efforts.

Football alone brought in $33.8 million in revenues last year — not counting millions in donations for season tickets — and the two basketball programs added another $10 million.

At the same time, he said no other school that he knows of, with the exception of the University of Notre Dame, gives back as much annually to the school, but UT has to compete with some SEC schools that charge their students to go to games, accept state tax dollars and give tuition breaks to out-of-state students.

After the presentation, Hamilton said the Athletics Department is still at a tipping point but intends to meet the "institutional directive" to graduate players, win in all sports and give back — at least for the time being.

The return of the seventh football home game will help next year, he said.

"I think our first goal is to be self-supporting and have quality teams," Cronan said. "What's been fun is we have been able to do that, combined with giving back, and our goal is to continue doing that."

There was other good financial news on Wednesday's agenda.

Henry Nemcik, UT's vice president for Development and Alumni Affairs, told a trustees' committee that UT's supporters gave it $156.8 million in 2005.

"I believe it's the largest single year we have ever had in private giving to the University of Tennessee," Nemcik told the Advancement and Public Affairs Committee.

Nemcik also reported that UT received $41.3 million last month, "the largest single month in the University of Tennessee System, I believe, as well."

UT is in the quiet stages of a $1 billion capital campaign that started last year but hasn't been officially announced yet.

In other business, the Finance and Administration Committee voted to authorize UT's administrators to pursue buying the former Metron property just off campus.

Gary Rogers, UT's chief financial officer, told the board that the appraised value of the complex containing 74,000 square feet of office and warehouse space on 11 acres is probably in the $5 million range.

The committee also voted to approve a $2.7 million expansion of the Graduate School of Medicine Building at The University of Tennessee Medical Center, which will provide space for up to 225 UT pharmacy students in their second, third and fourth years.

Both the Metron purchase and building expansion measures will have to be approved by the entire Board of Trustees, which will convene this afternoon after a series of committee meetings this morning.

Randy Kenner may be reached at 865-342-6305.