Report: AAC lost 45 percent of its football revenue with CFP change

The College Football Playoff was a big financial boon for most of conferences in college football, except for the American Athletic Conference (AAC), which actually lost money from the previous year, according to sports business reporter Kristi Dosh.

The AAC saw its overall revenue decline from $27.9 million in 2013, the final year of the BCS, to $15.2 million in 2014, the inaugural year of the College Football Playoff.

The reason for the decline is that the AAC, which was formerly the Big East, was no longer classified as a “Power Five” conference and therefore didn’t command the lion’s share of revenue it used to receive.

Instead, the AAC, which is now considered a “Group of Five” conference had to split its revenue with the Mountain West, Conference USA, Mid-American and Sun Belt Conferences. Those five conferences split $75 million as part of the new revenue distribution agreement for the College Football Playoff. Actually, $60 million is distributed evenly and the other $15 million is divided based on how the conferences perform against each other.

This is a big difference from the guaranteed $50 million each Power Five conference member gets, and that’s just the base. The amount of money each Power Five conference earns is often higher depending on a variety of other revenue streams, including participation in the College Football Playoff and “host” bowls, which were the major bowls played on New Years Eve. For example, the Pac-12 made more than $69 million in 2014, which was a $41.4 million increase from the previous year. Overall, Group of Five members saw an average increase of $13.2 million.

The Mountain West had a 553 percent increase in revenue, the largest of any conference, as it saw its revenue boom from $3.6 million in 2013 to $23.5 million. Overall, Group of Five conferences saw an average increase of $8.1 million.

While the AAC took the biggest hit among the major conferences in this new version of college football, the one team that is likely kicking itself the most is BYU. Under the College Football Playoff payment structure, the Cougars evenly divided a sum of $922,658 with Army and Navy. That division will change this year when Navy joins the AAC, but it’s still not as much as BYU would have earned had it remained in a conference.

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Graham Watson is the editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at dr.saturday@ymail.com or follow her on Twitter! Follow @YahooDrSaturday

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