Per an agreement struck four years ago, the five nonautomatic qualifying conferences -- Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West, Sun Belt and WAC -- split a 9 percent share of the overall BCS revenue, which in the past couple years has come out to about $9.6 million.
That BCS revenue share is split in half and each of the five conferences is given an equal portion, which comes out to $964,800 per conference. The other half is split into 15 shares and handed out based on performance. The top non-AQ conference earns five shares, the second-best earns four, the third earns three, and so on.
The Mountain West earns the most from this pool because it had the top BCS qualifier and two other teams ranked in the Top 25. Its payout from that pool is about $1.6 million, while the WAC, which had the second-highest BCS ranked team, earns just under $1.3 million.
The conferences also split about $9.8 million for TCU’s guaranteed spot in the Fiesta Bowl. The Mountain West gets $6 million of this because it has the BCS bowl qualifier and the five conferences split the remaining $3.7 million based on the performance tier system noted above.
Now, here’s where the numbers differ from a year ago. Because Boise State entered the BCS as an at-large, the WAC earns an extra $4.5 million. This money is for the WAC and will not be shared with the rest of the five-conference coalition. Boise State earns $3 million of that total and the rest is split evenly amongst the WAC’s member schools.
Because of this, the WAC is the only conference that makes more money than it did a year ago. If the payouts remain approximately the same as they did last year, which is expected, the Mountain West will lead the non-AQ conferences with a total revenue of $9.8 million and the WAC will earn $7.8 million. Both of these figures are before bowl expenses.
Last season, the WAC earned $3.2 million.