Bowl Games/BCS Title Game Expensive $$$

For example, Auburn's Outback Bowl trip cost the program roughly half as much as its BCS National Championship trip a year earlier. Auburn spent $1,671,723 on its Outback Bowl trip last year compared to $3.15 million for the BCS title game. Travel to the Outback Bowl cost $353,474 to send 732 people (team, staff, band, cheerleaders, official travel party), compared to $1,684,790 for 848 people to travel to the BCS title game. Auburn charted multiple planes to travel to California, whereas most players drove themselves to Tampa. Meals, lodging and/or per diem cost $924,687, with over 82 percent ($761,548) going to the team and staff due to the comparatively smaller travel party. Auburn had to absorb the cost of 1,898 tickets out of an allotment of 9,212 tickets for a total of $213,670 in unsold tickets to the game. There were also additional expenses for promotion, entertainment, awards, equipment, practice facility, security and audio Visual.

I'm just wondering out of the 99 bowl games this year how many teams actually turn a profit?

There willbe 42 bowl games this season not counting the Title game. Out of those 84 teams, my guess is that 8 may show a profit.

The bottom line per game may not tell the whole story. I recently read that the money divided by the NCAA and the conferences under contract to the TV networks, mostly ESPN lately topped a billion dollars this past season, or some ungodly amount that my subconscious mind buried because it was a ridiculous number. The checks for paying the participants is peanuts compared to the rest of the money paid from TV bowl proceeds by the conferences that divide it up among its member institutions and by the NCAA. I think somehow the total revenues for the first championship playoffs alone topped $350 million. There's more kickback there than anyone cares to admit. You guys should at LEAST be suspicious of how the books are being cooked to appear in whatever way it best benefits the "businesses" involved. JMHO, but perhaps a bit wiser in my silver years.

+ 1

I love the bowl season, there can't be enough bowl games imo. Great time to stay indoors and be a degen while its freezing outside.

Bowl games rob the schools..

I do not see how bowl games rob the schools. I promise you that if the schools were not getting reimbursed somehow, they would not send their teams to the "Who Gives a S**t" Bowl in Hicksville USA. Do you really think that schools in the AAC, MAC, CUSA, MWC, and Sunbelt can afford to send their teams to bowl games on their own?