There's a pretty detailed and interested look at bowl revenues for college teams up on Deadspin this morning, basically debunking the idea that teams lose their shirts at times by participating in bowl games.
The article focuses almost exclusively on the Orange Bowl, especially Virginia Tech's 2011 appearance against Stanford, with detailed breakdown on the Hokies bowl expenses/revenues and how everything is distributed to/from the ACC.
Long read, but well worth it, IMO
Teams In The Orange Bowl Don't Make Any Money, And Other Lies
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Anyone wanna give us a TL;DR?
Extremely simplified, the ACC is like a communist state. VT makes money, it all goes to the ACC, then VT gets back 1/12th of all bowl money gathered by the ACC from every team.
The huge loss showed in 2011 by VT was a misleading accounting trick that showed getting paid $22.5 million and then subtracting all the costs of going ($3.3 million) and then subtracting what it payed to the ACC's bowl pool and not accounting for what the ACC paid back. This is the key image to the whole thing(it's the 2012 Orange Bowl, but it covers everything)
I thought it was funny that a guy actually has the twitter handle UVAEER.
A better twitter name woulda been @loselose.
(Edit: memecrunch.com)
Turns out we didn't lose money on the 2011 Orange Bowl.
The ACC is essentially taking a conservative approach in how it manages the future of its members. Instead of allowing the teams to take all of the prize money from participating in a bowl, it takes all of the bowl money from every team and splits it up evenly. It also reimburses teams for a certain amount of their expenses and most teams come out "winners". The hope is that programs will operate within their budgets instead of going for the big payday each year.
What I don't understand is how this works for shitty teams like UVA who don't go to a bowl (thus having no expenses) yet still get a piece of the bowl pot. I understand that their are intangible benefits for both the school as an academic institution and the football program, but socialism to this degree eventually fails when too many people become complacent. Part of me wonders what kind of structure the SEC has because given the yearly turnover and hemorrhaging of money, I can't imagine they have a socialist system in place.
the sec shares revenue as well
This scheme can go on indefinitely, so long as schools aren't actually losing money.
I'm guessing the incentive for successful institutions to not slip into mediocrity comes from merch sales. Pretty sure any slip from money-maker to subsidized program would be painfully expensive.
I don't know what incentive HOOva football has to not slip into coma. The commonwealth cup? Hell, they don't even remember what that looks like. It's more abstract to them than the workings of Camille's elegantly appointed ladybits.
I imagine their intramural Polo team has been campaigning hard to take over the football stadium. They could make an excellent case they have better fan attendance.
For Camille, one is awarded a leg.