Florida State wins ACC title, but loses almost $500,000 in the process

For years we've heard about teams going to bowl games, having bad ticket sales and being dealt a large financial blow for what should be a rewarding trip.

Now, apparently, teams can double up that postseason money-burning fun, as Florida State reported a nearly $500,000 loss from its trip to the ACC Championship Game.

Warchant.com had the story with the financials, which came from the school's income statement from the ACC title game. FSU's exact loss from the game was $478,954.20, and more than 90 percent of that loss was from unsold tickets.

According to Warchant.com, each division winner was given 10,000 tickets to sell by the conference. Last season's matchup was pretty uninviting. It was Florida State against a 6-6 Georgia Tech team that finished in a three-way tie in the division with North Carolina and Miami, both of which were ineligible to go to the ACC title game. The conference title game was in Charlotte, which isn't an exciting destination for too many people.

So Florida State sold just 2,033 tickets, according to Warchant.com, and the stadium was less than half full for the game, which actually turned out to be a very competitive 21-15 win for the Seminoles. Although the ACC helped cover some of the expense after the first 6,000 tickets (which are all Florida State's responsibility), FSU's final expense on unsold tickets was $440,491.

Credit the ACC for moving fast to hopefully rectify this situation (something you'll never see the bowl games do). An ACC spokesman told Warchant.com that the league is already having internal discussions to ensure no team takes a financial hit from a conference championship appearance. The story says any measure taken might relieve Florida State of the financial hit from last year's game.

It turns out Miami and North Carolina may have lucked out not being able to go to last year's ACC title game. At least they didn't lose a half a million dollars.

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