Cha-Ching that is a tune to approximately $500,000 per school, except for Utah who would get between four and five million for making the game. Everyone in the league except for BYU and to a smaller extent TCU want the Cougars to win. BYU just wants to beat their rival which would then give them a share of the Mountain West title for the third straight year, and TCU would also get a share if they win and BYU wins.

The rest of the league 500k is HUGE to help with the entire athletic funds not just for football. So, many programs are lucky to break even and sometimes lose money in the athletic budget.

Just look at San Diego State they do not even have a stadium to call their own as they share with the San Diego Chargers, and this year had to have an emergency lease to just even play games there. That money could go toward a stadium or at least a new lease somewhere, but more realistically that money could toward buying out Chuck Long the current head coach who has underachieved since coming from Oklahoma as their offensive coordinator a few years back.

Wyoming has little money coming in besides gate revenue, and their recruiting expenses are high for all sports just to bring people into Laramie.

For the league it would be best for Utah to win this weekends game against BYU and get the guaranteed millions for going to a BCS bowl game. Before each schools games this week they will be keeping an eye on and secretly rooting for the Utes to provide their school with some extra cash.