(12-20-2014 08:04 AM)goodknightfl Wrote: Most of the $$ went to the 3 left behind schools to keep their payouts up for the next few years, while TV money is so low. Some of it went to the new schools to do the same. The AAC is doing just fine building its new brand, and the individual school need the cash to build their own individual programs. I agree some cash in the Miami bowl may make sense, but doubt schools would willingly give up a 100k or so to have the extra Mil for it. I don't know if 500k extra payout would have made a big dif on a 1st year bowl game.
There is little point in a 500K bump. That's just a waste of money.
Here is what I would do. The CFP flowing to the G5 is about 85 million and is divided into 3 pools of money. Ones is divided evenly and will provide us with 1 million per team (maxing out at 12 million per conference) that we can count on every year--that's 59 million of the 85 million. The rest, of the CFP G5 pot comes to about 26 million. That money is distributed based on performance. It will go up and down every year. Six million goes to the conference that puts a team in the access bowl and the rest (about 20 million) is divided up into 15 shares and is distributed based upon overall conference performance (#1 gets 5 shares, #2 gets 4 shares, #3 gets 3 shares, etc...).
My suggestion would be to send all the performance based money over and above 1 share into the bowl fund. So if we get 1 share, nothing goes into the fund. If we get 4 shares, 3 shares (3.99 million) go into the fund. Over a 6 year period we could amass as little as zero or as much as 32 million. If we averaged a second place finish over the next 6 years we would amass almost 24 million in that fund. Since its money nobody can count on, anything over one share is not really going to be built into any school athletic budget.
A 20 million dollar fund would allow us to offer an opponent a 3 million dollar pay day for the Miami Bowl in 2020 when the NEW bowl cycle starts. Based on what I see currently, that should be enough to get the Miami Bowl into a P5 rotation with a #3, #4, or #5 selection from these conferences (similar to the Liberty Bowl). Bumping the payout 500K is useless. If we want a quality bowl for our champion the only way we are going to get one is to pay for it.
Having a signature bowl against a worthy opponent for our champ is a way of elevating us in stature. The power conferences all have such a post season destination. Establishing our own "Orange Bowl" is the first step toward reaching that "tweener" conference status.
Keep in mind, this 3 million dollar investment isn't necessarily lost money. Remember, we own the Miami Bowl. With a high end power conference opponent in OUR bowl, we would sell more tickets, get a better date, and receive more money for the broadcast/sponsorship rights. If things go well, we not only get most of our money back, we may, like most bowls do, actually make a significant profit on the arrangement (which would then flow back to the schools as even more income than they would have received from the original CFP payout). Once the fund is large enough to safely fund the bowl, the excess can be funneled back to the member schools.