I don’t think WVU is necessarily proud of this and it’s not really being promoted as something of an accomplishment, but it’s not terrible news and there is a sense of relief that the loss for the Orange Bowl wasn’t as large as anticipated.

As far back as late January, people I speak to were figuring hundreds of thousands of dollars. Perhaps half a million, but maybe just $300,000 or so. So I guess losing $217,700 for a mandatory week-long stay at a famously swank resort in a pretty pricey part of the country isn’t all that bad.

“We obviously planned for the worst and really worked our tails off to minimize our expenses on this trip, which was a very expensive trip, and we really did a good job of that,” said Mike Parsons, deputy athletic director.

“Some costs didn’t come out as high as we had planned, and we were careful to manage our expenses in some other areas.”

Still, that’s three net losses in five years and a cumulative loss across those trips of $805,568 — and that’s more of a commentary on the system and not the school. It’s important to remember that WVU will also leave behind the $2,222,000 it received from the Big East Conference for the Orange Bowl ($2 million for being the BCS representative, $222,000 for mileage). That forfeiture is part of the settlement agreement that allows WVU to bypass the Big East’s 27-month exit period so it can join the Big 12 Conference July 1.

Obviously, a major chunk here is the unsold and absorbed tickets. The Mountaineers were made to pay for 9,737 that were either allocated to players, coaches, etc., or unsold. Each cost between $75 and $225.

This is convenient, but sell 968 of the $225 tickets and WVU finishes in the black. Or sell a bunch more from all of the categories and WVU finishes in the black. Or maybe if the game wasn’t three days after New Year’s Day and 10 days after Christmas and on a Wednesday, WVU sells more tickets and finishes in the black.

I’ve argued before that with the 70-33 victory, WVU probably sold a lot of tickets for future bowls, what with regret being as powerful as it is. With that in mind, what’s most interesting to me out of all of this is that ticket sales really won’t be WVU’s worry in the future. The Big East Conference has a wholly different philosophy than does the Big 12 Conference.

“The ticket obligation is not on the school. It goes to the conference,” Parsons said. “They essentially take the hit on it, but they’ll make the money off of ticket sales, too. But they incentivize it. Say the commitment is 10,000. They say, ‘If your sales go over 5,000, we’ll give you half.’

“They encourage you to sell more tickets, and you can realize more money in the long run. It’s just a different way and it takes a lot of pressure off the schools.”