Now that the NCAA football season is over, it's time to look back at some of the big stories, especially those outside the white lines.
THE BOWL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES
This year the BCS system worked fairly well. Undefeated Alabama was crowned national champions, leaving Boise State as the only other team without a loss. There is no chance university administrators will abandon the current system in favor of a Division I-A playoff. There is just too much money to be made with the current bowl setup. It seems a bit suspicious that TCU and Boise were matched up in the Fiesta Bowl, especially after non-BCS qualifiers have won three of four games when facing automatic qualifiers in the past few years.
BOWL PAYOUTS
Despite the huge pile of cash involved, the system is rife with inequities. In the Big 12 this year Texas, playing in the championship game, received $1.63 million in expense dollars. Oklahoma State, Nebraska, Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Iowa State received $1 million each for playing in the Cotton, Holiday, Alamo and Insight bowls, respectively. Texas A&M and Missouri got $630,000 each for the Independence and Texas bowls. All conference bowl teams receive $300/one-way mile. Payouts range from $17 million for the BCS games to $300,000 for the Papaohns.com Bowl. Below is a list of the total payouts for this year's Big 12 bowls:
Independence Bowl: $1,100,000
Holiday Bowl: $2,200,000
Sun Bowl: $1,900,000
Texas Bowl: $1,250,000
Insight Bowl: $1,200,000
Cotton Bowl: $3,000,000
Alamo Bowl: $2,250,000
BCS Championship: $17,000,000
$29,900,000
While some bowls divide bowl payouts unequally between participating teams, I think the eight with Big 12 ties split the dollars evenly. Big 12 By-Laws dictate that all revenue from the bowls is to be divided equally among all conference schools. There are a few caveats to that distribution. To use Missouri as an example this year, it failed to sell its full allotment of tickets to the Texas Bowl. The conference guarantees all the tickets for all bowl participants and was therefore obligated to cover the cost of the unsold ducats. Such costs are deducted from total revenues before the splits are distributed. Although I cannot, for the life of me, crunch the numbers, it has been reported MU lost somewhere in the neighborhood of $20,000 to take team, staff, hangers-on, the band and pep squads to the Texas Bowl. My roommate stated unequivocally that he could balance a bowl trip budget. I suggested he start his own blog, do the research and/or apply to be Missouri's athletic director. That would probably solve everything.
Big money is THE big problem in today's college sports world. The FBS college presidents have received their report from the Knight Commission addressing that very issue. I'll have more on that soon.
Time constraints prevent me from continuing this post with commentary on the coaching hirings, firings and related drama. That, too, will be addressed in future commentary.
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