As I was watching last Monday night’s College Football National Championship Game between Alabama and Georgia, I found myself wondering how much these schools and raking in financially from being in the game. After doing some research, I found out that the school doesn’t receive the financial windfall directly, as there was no additional compensation for the school competing in the national title game. Win or lose, Alabama and Georgia have already each earned $6 million for the respective conferences simply by playing in the the four-team College Football Playoff.
I found it interesting and important to note that any revenue earned by a team by playing in a bowl game this season, goes directly to the conference and then is distributed according to each conference’s own regulations. So, the four teams (Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma and Clemson) weren’t the only teams cashing in on a big payday for their conferences. There are also guaranteed payouts for teams playing the Cotton, Fiesta and Peach Bowls, not to mention a contractual payout for the Orange Bowl. There is also contractual payouts for the Rose and Sugar Bowls, but with those bowl games part of the college football playoff this year, those conference payouts do not exist.
Under the College Football Playoff revenue distribution system, the Cotton, Fiesta and Peach Bowl, paid out $4 million each to per team, to their respective conference. The Orange Bowl is part of the New Years 6 Bowl games, and it has a contractual agreement with the ACC, which places that team (conference) against the highest ranked team available from the Big Ten, SEC or Notre Dame. This year’s game featured the University of Miami from the ACC and the University of Wisconsin from the Big Ten and had a huge contractual payout of $27.5 million for each team.
To reiterate, the one thing that I learned, that astonishes me, is that the schools competing do not get the money directly. The payout for competing in a college football bowl game goes to the conference and then is divided up among the schools according the conference’s rules and regulations.
Forbes did a great job outlining what each conference made this year from the bowl season, but here it is in a nutshell.
Big Ten – totaled $89.5 million. A good portion of that, $27.5 million, from the University of Wisconsin’s berth in the Orange Bowl.
ACC – total of $87.5 million. Similar to the Big Ten, with a good portion of that total coming from the University of Miami’s berth in the Orange Bowl.
SEC – received $70 million. Georgia and Alabama brought in $12 million of that for their berths in the college football semi-final games.
PAC-12 – brought in $62 million.
Big 12 – generated $60 million. With $6 million of that being from Oklahoma’s berth in the semi-final game.
That is just the power 5 conferences breakdown. But as we can tell, college football is big money. There is a reason that college football Saturday is a big business. College football in general is big business, and like any business, college football survives because its employees continue to perform at an elite level. No matter who won the national championship game or each of the bowl games, the university’s will have no problem balancing the budgets.
