Mountain West distributes record $46 million to member schools

The College Football Playoff has added more revenue to pay out to conferences and schools. The money has helped the Mountain West take home a record $46 million to pay their schools. This is a large increase from last year where the conference divided up $29 million.

Leading the way for the Mountain West is Boise State who will receive $5.3 million from the conference, plus an additional $4 million for the Broncos appearance in the Fiesta Bowl. They also led the conference with $2 million in bonus television money.

Fresno State and Utah State both earned record revenue with $4.9 million to the Bulldogs and just over $4 million for the Aggies.

Boise State will likely earn the most money each year from the Mountain West since they are guaranteed to earn at least $900,000 in bonus television money, and ESPN controls their six home games. That gives them a built in advantage. Getting to a New Year's Day bowl game is also a big deal to a group of five teams bottom line and can basically double the total revenue for a school.

While the money is increasing overall due to the College Football Playoff, some Mountain West schools are not too happy the bonus TV structure since the divide is getting wider between the top of the league to the bottom.

The Mountain West TV deal between CBS and ESPN pays $1.64 million per school, and there is slightly more with the deal with ROOT Sports. Then there is the playoff money that the league distributes.

The bonus total was $7 million for this past year, and had that money been distributed evenly each school would have received $636,364. Hawaii has their own television deal and does not get bonus money.

Boise State: $2.1 million

Wyoming: $1.3 million

Utah State: $1.1 million

Fresno State: $1.1 million

Colorado State: $500,000

Nevada: $300,000

New Mexico: $300,000

San Jose State: $300,000

UNLV, San Diego State, Air Force: No bonuses