Note that the other Bowls that MAC teams will be playing in have a combined payout of about $9 million.  Now team expenses need to be considered, but a nice month of payouts. 

Would be interesting to have someone figure out what these dollars mean as a percent of athletic budget for MAC teams vs. what the larger conferences are garnering - i.e., they may have higher overall payouts, but as a percent of budget, the MAC would probably be at the top.

There is not. Other non-AQ's have all given a bigger cut to the participating school so I'm assuming the MAC would do the same. Especially of NIU can't sell its ticket allotment. I could see the MAC making it whole.

The Kalamazoo Gazette this morning ran an article saying the MAC would only get $8M. Not sure if that's incremental to the normal BCS payout they get every year or not. But the article makes it clear that the MAC hasn't decided how to split the money yet. Which also leads me to believe it won't be split evenly.

http://www.mlive.com/broncos/index.ssf/2012/12/northern_illinois_bcs_orange_b.html

Far be it from me to say I know what the MAC is going to do with it's money, but it has set aside BCS money in the past to offset the cost of bowl participation when ticket sales would otherwise leave an athletic department taking a loss.

I would imagine a large chunk of this will be tagged as such.