Found this article about College Football Bowls and it should give some insight of the bowl money situation. The real money in college sports, where everyone has a fair shot, is the NCAA Basketball Tournament. 

Only three or four football teams a year which go to a bowl make money off the bowl and here is the reason why.

The Dirty Secret Behind College Football Bowls

By LynnO'Shaughnessy | Dec 19, 2009

Are college bowl games money losers for collegefootball teams?

Lots of times bowl games are money pits. Many athletic programs losemoney because college bowls routinely impose ticket guarantees. Lastyear, according to an investigation by the San Diego Union-Tribune,college teams and their sports conferences lost $15.5 million becauseof unsold tickets for the 34 college bowl games.

Richard Southall, the director of College Sports Research Instituteat the University of North Carolina, calls the ticket guaranteerequirement a “cover charge” for the schools so they can have fun at abowl party. With these ticket guarantees, it’s no wonder that bowls haveproliferated since it’s the schools that are assuming the big risk.

In 1996, fans only needed enough potato chips and chili to lastthrough 18 bowl games, but today there are, count em, 34 bowls. Andfolks, more bowl games are planned to join such illustrious events asthe Chick-fil-A, Meineke Car Care, Maaco and Little Caesars Pizza bowls.

Here are some of the money losers among last year’s bowl games:

Orange Bowl. Virginia Tech and its conference lost$1.77 million because the school only sold 3,342 of its mandatory 17,500tickets.

Fiesta Bowl. Ohio State sold less than 10,000tickets leaving it more than 7,500 short. That generated a $1 millionloss for the Buckeyes and the Big Ten Conference.

Insight Bowl. The University of Minnesota and theBig Ten Conference only bought 1,512 tickets out of the mandatory10,500, which led to a $434,340 loss.

Holiday Bowl. Oklahoma and the Big 12 Conferencelost $318,490 after it couldn’t sell 5,438 of its tickets.

And don’t think that it’s just universities that are played forsuckers. Taxpayers are propping up bowl games too. According to the WallStreet Journal, between 2001 and 2005, seven tax-exempt college bowls pocketed $21.6 million ingovernment aid. Bowl committees pay lobbyists to protect their sketchytax-exempt status. Sure would be nice if somebody looked into all this.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writesabout college for TheCollegeSolutionBlog.