kang@journalnet.com

Neither Idaho State nor the Big Sky Conference stands to reap a financial windfall from Montana's surge to the Championship Subdivision title game because, unlike the Bowl Subdivision, football's second-tier conferences don't practice revenue sharing.

Every year, each BCS conference receives tens of millions of dollars in bowl payouts that are split among its teams. Men's basketball is the only other NCAA sport that has such a form of revenue sharing.

The main reason for this discrepancy is that, until recently, the FCS playoffs didn't generate a profit, Big Sky Commissioner Doug Fullerton said. The NCAA sponsors the per diem and traveling allowances for each playoff team's traveling party, including its marching band, and in the past, that usually ate up all - if not more - of the money the FCS made from its television contracts.

That trend has reversed in four of the past six years, Fullerton said, but the FCS still turns whatever money is left over back to the NCAA. The commissioners are fine with that system because the profits remain a negligible sum of money.

"It'd be touch and go. I'd prefer to leave it alone," Fullerton said by phone. "It's not something we worry about because we get a lot of money from the NCAA."