ESPN Reportedly Paying $80 Million Per Season for the Champions Bowl

ESPN continues its acquisition of college football's biggest games today with the Champions Bowl (the new Big 12 - SEC partnership) reportedly getting $80 million per season from the Worldwide Leader to split evenly between the two conferences. That means, all things equal, Baylor should pocket a clean $4 million per season in revenue from the Champions Bowl alone. Pretty good scratch, I think.

The rights for the ACC's partner bowl, the Orange Bowl, have not yet been sold, but I have to believe they won't come close to $80 million per year. Rumor on twitter is that the Orange Bowl will split $55 million, meaning ACC schools will pocket just over $2 million less per season than their Big 12 counterparts. Add two schools to the Big 12 roster and the individual schools still earn $3.333 million per season.

So that's good news for a cash-hungry Baylor program that is rumored to be breaking ground on August 8. Oh, did I not tell you about that? Yeah, and they're already clearing the site.