Cal’s Drop Out of BCS Game Is Costly for Pac-10

With a football team that won only three games this season, it would seem Arizona remained far from the controversy that surrounded the bowl championship series.

But athletic department officials in Tucson watched almost as anxiously as the top-ranked teams when the final BCS standings were announced over the weekend.

They saw California nudged out of the Rose Bowl, costing the Pacific 10 Conference millions of dollars in payouts, most of which would have been split evenly among all the teams.

The cost to Arizona? An estimated $275,000.

“Uniforms, equipment, supplies, recruiting ... that can help pay for a lot of things,” said John Perrin, Arizona’s senior associate athletic director in charge of finances. “It sure would have been nice to get.”

No doubt the final standings stung Cal the deepest. Despite ending the regular season with a victory over Southern Mississippi, the Golden Bears slipped from No. 4 to No. 5 in the final BCS rankings, allowing Texas to grab the invitation to Pasadena. Cal will travel to San Diego for the Holiday Bowl.

This change in fortunes triggered a complex financial dynamic within the Pac-10.

Bowl game payouts go not to the individual participating schools, but to their conferences.

For example, when No. 1 USC plays No. 2 Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl on Jan. 4, the Pac-10 will receive the $14.4-million check.

The conference will give $1.25 million to the Trojans for expenses. The remaining $13.15 million will be divided evenly among the 10 conference members.

When Cal dropped in the BCS standings, two things happened.

The Pac-10 realized it would get $2 million for Cal’s appearance in the Holiday Bowl instead of $4.5 million for the Rose Bowl, officials said. (Conferences earn a reduced payout for a second team in a BCS game.)

Also, every other bowl-eligible team from the Pac-10 -- except USC -- was knocked down a peg.

So UCLA, at the bottom of the list, was bumped from the Insight Bowl with its $750,000 payout to the Las Vegas Bowl, which pays $575,000, conference officials said.

“We would anticipate breaking even on the Las Vegas Bowl because we broke even two years ago,” said Marc Dellins, a UCLA spokesman.

But when all the Pac-10 bowl payouts are added up, the net effect of everyone but USC being downgraded will translate into $2.75 million less. Thus, the $275,000 decrease per school.

In those terms, Cal “got hurt no worse than anyone else,” said Jim Muldoon, assistant commissioner. “The hurt is split 10 ways.”

But along with the Golden Bears missing out on their first trip to the Rose Bowl since 1959, they also lost an opportunity to generate the excitement that can lead to increased booster donations and merchandise sales.

That money is particularly significant at a time when Cal is trying to upgrade its athletic programs.

There are plans to remodel the football stadium. On Monday, the school gave Coach Jeff Tedford a five-year contract extension that will pay $1.5 million a season plus incentives.

The school could only speculate on how much was lost in Rose Bowl-related revenues, a Cal spokesman said.

At the nearby Pac-10 offices, Muldoon figured it could be a lot.

“The side stuff ... that’s really a difference-maker for schools,” he said. “That’s how [Cal] got hurt.”

Times staff writer Lonnie White contributed to this report.