[Bowser]

Some quick math should explain why SEC athletic directors and presidents are so giddy about the numbers the network is pumping out. The difference in revenue between this year and last year isn’t strictly the result of the network; this also was the first year of the College Football Playoff and several more lucrative bowl deals. According to the CFP, the SEC would have received about $34 million last year from the BCS in its final season. Based on the CFP distribution model, the SEC should have received $87.5 million this year from the playoff and its affiliated bowls. Since the league office also gets a share of all of this to fund its operations, each SEC school gets roughly an extra $3.6 million from the playoff. If each school got an extra million from the SEC’s other bowl deals, which is a fairly generous guesstimate, that would mean each school got an additional $5.5 million from the SEC Network. More specifically, each school would get that amount during a year in which the network has been on the air for less than 10 months and the league and schools had to cover startup costs.

That means the number will get a lot bigger next year, which should be increasingly frustrating for the ACC, Big 12 and Pac-12, which have no obvious mechanisms to raise more money in the immediate future.

I like it. I like it a lot.