The Mountain West Conference restructured its TV and football playoff money to entice Boise State to stay, but there’s nothing that says the Broncos have to be the only ones who make out like bandits.
Indeed, the potential beauty of the MWC’s new TV plan is that even though it was devised with Boise State in mind, nowhere on the face of it does it say another conference member, such as, say, Hawaii can’t be somebody who rakes in the moolah, too. In theory at least, you need not have a blue field to be rolling in the green.
To get Boise State to give up the foolishness about taking its football team to the Big East, commissioner Craig Thompson went back to the conference’s TV partner, CBS, and got a deal whereby the MWC can separately broker the rights to the Broncos’ home games.
Boise State does not directly get that money, but the more its games get picked up, the more it stands to cash in on the conference’s new bonus plan. Here’s how it was explained on an MWC conference call: Teams that play in conference games and home nonconference contests under the MWC package on ESPN, ESPN2, ABC, CBS, NBC or Fox earn $300,000 per appearance. If the game is played on Saturday, there is an additional $200,000. So, there’s the income potential of as much as $500,000 per game.
Thompson said the new equation is simple: “the more you are on national TV, the more (revenue) you are receiving.”
Previously all TV money was pooled and shares awarded at the end of the season. For example, the last TV check UH got from the Western Athletic Conference pool was $392,000 for the 2010 season.
It remains to be seen, however, how UH’s pay-per-view package dispensation might be handled.
In addition to the new TV bonus plan, any MWC member that participates in the Bowl Championship Series in 2013 or the new playoff format thereafter will keep 50 percent of the payout. In the post-BCS era that could mean a 50/50 split of perhaps $20 million to $30 million when finances are finalized.
Compare that with the $4.3 million UH got for its share of the 2008 Sugar Bowl money.
Consider that if something akin to the new MWC systems had been in place for the 2007 season when the Warriors went to the Sugar Bowl, UH might have realized approximately $7 million instead of the $4.9 million check it got.
Between them, the TV and playoff money provisions make powerful incentives for members to field a competitive, compelling team. The more exciting and more successful you are, the bigger share of the rewards you reap.
That formula for dividing the pot has traditionally been a sore point in mid-major conferences. It was cited as one of the causes of the breakup of the old 16-member Western Athletic Conference after the 1998 season. Brigham Young and some of the others felt they were too often subsidizing the “bottom feeders”and being denied some of the money they had been responsible for producing.
In the new MWC it will pay to be a telegenic winner.
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Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
