Cleveland Plain Dealer

January 4, 2008

by Elton Alexander

The common perception is that college football teams all profit from playing in one of the 32 postseason bowl games.

The reality is most don't put much money in their pockets, but they do profit in another way: exposure from the bowl telecast.

The top six bowl payouts per team are the Bowl Championship Series title game, Sugar Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Orange Bowl and Rose Bowl - all at $17 million - then the Capital One Bowl at $4.2 million.

Bowl payouts drop significantly after that, with 13 of the 32 bowls (41 percent) having payouts of $750,000 or less.....

But the real payoff doesn't come in the form of money you can spend, but exposure you can't buy. For most teams, going to a bowl game is like driving a Cadillac to recruit players: It's a gas-guzzler, but it says something.

"You've got to see what it does," said former Northern Illinois head coach Joe Novak, who led his Huskies to the Poinsettia Bowl in 2006. "You can't put a price on it.

"If people don't understand the value of a bowl game, then they're missing it. It costs us money. But you're getting 3½ hours on national television of opportunity to advertise your university. If there's some administrators who don't think that's worth it, then I don't get it."

Bowl teams also get the added advantage of 15 days extra practice and a selected commercial spot during the bowl telecast for an "institutional message."

According to Joyce Julius and Associates, a research firm in Ann Arbor, Mich., several MAC teams have used bowls to their marketing advantage.

In 2005, according to JJA, Akron earned the equivalent of $1,384,160 in TV commercial exposure during the Motor City Bowl broadcast. In 2006, Central Michigan's Motor City Bowl broadcast equaled $2,742,365 of advertising.

That's nowhere close to the $65.4 million estimated worth Ohio State received during its BCS title game broadcast against Florida, but it's still a significant amount of advertising for the school - and the price is right.

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