Article: BE bowl dollars on the way up

[TyBull]

Article: BE bowl dollars on the way up

Wednesday May 30, 2007

Big East's BCS dollars on the way up

by Jack Bogaczyk

Daily Mail Sports Editor

How valuable is a seat at the six-conference Bowl Championship Series table?

Had interloper Boise State not played its way into an automatic BCS slot last season, the five conferences and one independent (Navy) outside the BCS would have shared about $11.4 million in bowl payouts.

The BCS payment alone for one appearing team per conference -- thanks to a new Fox telecast contract -- was a record $18,088,675 in 2006-07. Had a Boise not made the five-game BCS, that $18.1 million would have grown by another $1.55 million per conference.

No further explanation is needed as to why the Big East Conference and its remaining core football members -- West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, Syracuse and then-newcomer Connecticut -- lobbied as they did in 2005 to retain BCS inclusion after Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College left for the ACC.

Louisville, WVU and emerging Rutgers finished among the top 16 in the BCS standings last season. Only the Southeastern Conference topped that (Florida, LSU, Auburn and Arkansas were in top 12).

So, the Big East's berth among college football's big boys is way more secure than it was a year earlier.

The Big East never will generate the bowl revenue of its five peer BCS conferences. It only has eight football members. It only has five (six in 2008) bowl berths.

However, the Providence, R.I.-based conference continues its pigskin recovery, and the BCS check helps mightily. Before last season, the league scrambled to salvage its lower-tier bowl profile -- then went 5-0 in the postseason.

That can't hurt. Nor would a return to glory by tradition-laden Pitt and Syracuse.

The Big East lost an automatic Gator Bowl spot, but saved a "tradition bowl" berth with a Gator/Sun rotation. The Meineke Car Care Bowl punted the Big East for Navy last season -- but the league is back in Charlotte, N.C., for the next three.

New bowls in Houston, Birmingham, Ala., and Toronto provided Big East needed slots -- if not big money.

The Big East gets a Texas Bowl berth twice in four years, but not in 2007, when it goes to Conference USA and the Big 12. So, the Big East's bowl rotation is BCS, Gator/Sun (likely the latter), Car Care, Papajohns.com and International (the last two can flip-flop Nos. 4-5).

The conference's bowl revenue from the 2006-07 season was a league record $21,888,675 for five games. It didn't help that the first-year Texas Bowl only paid $500,000 to the Big East and the start-up Birmingham game paid $300,000 per team.

The Big East lost its Insight berth, which paid $877,000 per team in 2005, but trips to Birmingham and Toronto ($750,000 each) make more geographic sense for the Big East than a date in Arizona.

Birmingham should increase its payout this year, but the Gator is likely to invite a Big 12 team or Notre Dame rather than a Big East club, putting the Big East into the Sun -- which in 2006 paid $1.9 million per team (below the Gator's $2.25 million).

The one-year Texas trade for the Car Care (in 2008 the Big East will have both) will help the conference financially by $500,000 -- more if fans from Big East and ACC schools fill seats in Charlotte, N.C.

The payout there has been $750,000 per team for the last four years -- after a 2002 inaugural (Continental Tire Bowl) sellout for WVU-Virginia created a payoff of $1.32 million per team.

Where the Big East could make its biggest financial gain in the bowl picture is to land a second team into the BCS field. That brings a conference an additional $4.5 million above the $18 million base.

As for West Virginia, the Mountaineers' 2006-07 football revenue sharing figure from the Big East will be in the $4.7 million range, according to Russ Sharp, WVU's associate athletic director for finance.

That's down from $5.63 million the previous year, and the reasons are in the 2006 Big East standings.

WVU fell from a BCS berth in the Sugar to the Gator (therefore $500,000 less from the Big East), and shared second- and third-place place performance money with Rutgers ($200,000 apiece for a second-place tie, rather than $600,000 for a WVU title finish in 2005).

The Mountaineers also will receive a slightly smaller check for its telecast appearances.

WVU was paid $806,452 in the Big East's TV units plan in '05. It was $779,661 this past season. The small loss was made up in unexpected Big East exposure.

Because the conference received 21 home game telecasts -- about 5-6 more than expected -- the Big East had to divide its TV revenue pool more times, and lowering projected dollars in each unit share.

The conference will finish its renegotiated "post-ACC raid" football TV contract this season, at $8 million. When a new six-year deal kicks off in 2008, the annual Big East payment by networks will be in the $13 million range.

The impending deal at least is in the same neighborhood as the $15 million contract before Miami, BC and Tech headed south for more riches and North Carolina conference leadership.

As for Big East football, thanks to BCS bucks, a deeper bowl pool and a new TV contract, things appear to be heading north again.

@tagline:Contact Sports Editor Jack Bogaczyk at jackb@dailymail.com or 348-7949.