By John Erardi
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Besides the national exposure, there are plenty of other reasons why the University of Cincinnati Bearcats wish they had been invited to a major bowl game.

One of the reasons would be the money that big bowls pay. Even the non-BCS bowls on New Year's Day pay more than twice the $750,000 the New Orleans Bowl will give to Conference USA to divvy up among UC (7-6) and its other member schools. The Sun Belt Conference, of which North Texas is a member, also gets $750,000 to distribute.

The non-BCS New Year's Day bowls are the Gator ($1.6 million to each team's conferences, although Notre Dame gets to keep the entire check because the Irish aren't in a football conference), Outback ($2 million), Cotton ($3 million) and Capital One ($5.125 million).

By the time UC pays for its five-day trip to New Orleans for Tuesday's game (7 p.m. on ESPN2), there will hardly be any money left.

"If we can cover our expenses, that's our goal," said Bearcats athletic director Bob Goin. "The amount (from C-USA) is capped out, and you have to make it work."

Goin didn't disclose UC's expenses are for the New Orleans trip, but it isn't cheap. It's not as expensive as, say, going to the Hawaii Bowl. Tulane officials have said their expenses will be $500,000 to $600,000 for Hawaii.

With expenses such as those, one can understand why there isn't much money left from these $750,000 payouts from four C-USA-affiliated bowls (New Orleans, GMAC, Hawaii and Houston).

C-USA's top bowl - the Liberty - pays out $1.3 million to each of the team's conferences. Texas Christian, which tied the Bearcats for the C-USA championship, got the Liberty spot because its 9-2 record was more attractive to officials there than was UC's 7-6 - even though the Horned Frogs lost their regular-season meeting. In most conferences, there is a who-beat-who tiebreaker, but not in C-USA.

TCU will do better financially from its bowl outing, said C-USA assistant commissioner Brian Teter, but UC will clear a few bucks.

"All the (C-USA) teams that go to bowl games will come out ahead," Teter said.