While the winless University of Hawaii football team focuses on trying to escape its division cellar in the Mountain West Conference, it has more than a rooting interest in who wins the championship.

Several hundred thousand reasons to root, it could turn out.

If unbeaten Fresno State runs the regular-season table to a Bowl Championship Series berth — and that is still a big "if" — the Rainbow Warriors stand to pocket approximately $500,000 as their share of the MWC pot, according to industry estimates.

UH athletic director Ben Jay — no particular fan of Bulldogs red, but a fervent believer in green cash with a $30 million budget to balance — said, "I’m a fan of whoever the conference can get (into the BCS) because of the financial ties."

Small wonder. That kind of a paycheck would beat the heck out of the $134,825 UH said it took in from last year’s share of the MWC bowl proceeds. It would recoup much of the $625,000 UH is contracted as a condition of membership to fork over for travel subsidies to bring MWC opponents to Aloha Stadium this season.

The Bulldogs are the only MWC team with a shot at delivering the payday to the conference in this, the last year of what is sure to be the little lamented parting of the BCS. To do it, Fresno State will have to finish in the top 12 of the final BCS standings or reach the top 16 and be above a champion of one of the automatic qualifying conferences.

Currently, the Bulldogs are No. 16 and lead Louisville (19) and Central Florida (23) of the American Athletic Conference, formerly known as the Big East, an automatic qualifying conference for the moment. But Fresno State also has Northern Illinois of the Mid-American Conference, last season’s BCS Buster, nipping at its spikes at No. 17.

Mostly, the Bulldogs need to win out, no easy task considering the way Fresno State has gone about getting to 7-0. Four games, including the 42-37 victory over UH, have been decided by seven points or fewer, two of them in overtime.

But the remaining schedule — Nevada, Wyoming, New Mexico, San Jose State and likely the inaugural MWC Championship game — is favorable.

That could deliver upwards of a $12 million check to the MWC, depending upon several variables. The Bulldogs’ prize, potentially beyond

$6 million, would be the biggest in MWC history. For that they could thank Boise State.

As an enticement for Boise State to spurn the AAC and stay in the MWC, the conference agreed in January that any member appearing in a BCS game would get a 50 percent share of the conference’s BCS money.

"After the total BCS finances are figured out and the BCS team receives its ‘bonus’ for playing in the game, all league institutions would get an even allotment," an MWC spokesman said in an email.

For the ‘Bows, their resulting share might even be enough to soothe the disappointment that the Bulldogs escaped from Aloha Stadium with a victory in September.

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Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.