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NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The University of Utah football team is undefeated on the field. But on the bottom line, the program is a loser.

The upstart Utes, the first outsiders invited to a big-dollar bowl by the bigger-dollar conferences, are 11-0 this year.

But a Department of Education report for the 2003-2004 school year shows the University lost just over $1 million on its program last year, when the team went 10-2, including a Liberty Bowl victory.

In fact, making it to the Liberty Bowl was one reason Utah lost money. Trips to the non-BCS bowls are often money losers, due to the expenses of bringing along not only the team but the band, support staff and others, as well as guaranteeing a certain number of tickets sold.

Moreover, the school paid for two coaching staffs – the one led by Urban Meyer, who transformed the team into an unexpected power, and one led by his predecessor, Ron McBride, who was fired after a 5-6 record in 2002.

This year, Utah might show a nice profit, though not as much as you might assume for a team headed to the Fiesta Bowl, one of four games that make up the Bowl Championship Series.

The bowl pays a total of $30.5 million. Utah and opponent University of Pittsburgh, however, must split the money with the other schools in their conferences.

The Utes should net about $2 million after paying the expenses of going to the bowl, while the other seven schools in the Mountain West Conference will get about $1 million each for staying home.

This year's expected profits weren't enough for Utah to retain their coaching savior. Meyer will be coaching at University of Florida next year, a powerhouse school that made about a $30 million profit on its football program last year on revenue of $42.7 million.

Florida is going to a much smaller bowl than Utah this year – the Peach Bowl. But because of the way bowl money is split, Florida's take from the bowls might not be significantly less this year, despite a disappointing 7-4 season. As an SEC school, it's sure to get a slice of the big dollars from the four BCS bowls each year.

And as impressive as Florida's revenue and profit figures were, they are only good enough to make it No. 4 among the teams that went to a bowl this year or last.

The football program at the University of Texas topped both the revenue and profit lists in the 2003-04 school year.

For Utah, the money and exposure of its appearance in the Fiesta Bowl this year may be a one-time experience. That makes hanging onto a top coach, or recruiting a top player, almost impossible.

"We have to accept that that is what's going on in the world," Utah athletic director Chris Hill told me recently. "We've been fortunate enough to compete at a national level. We have a good league we compete in. We don't worry about everyone else."

The Utes aren't the only team playing in bowls this year or last to lose money on their football program. An analysis of the 73 teams that went to bowls last season, this year or both, shows that nearly one in four lost money.

But Texas Tech was the only one of those money losing teams was from the five conferences that make up the Bowl Championship Series – the Big Ten, the Big East, the Big 12, the SEC, the Pac 10 or the ACC.

Schools in those conferences don't just get almost all of the BCS bowl money, they get the majority of the dollars available from the non-BCS bowls.

The schools in the non-major conferences are left with the crumbs of lower paying bowls that cost more to attend than they pay out in revenues. The situation has left college football with such an unlevel playing field, it makes rags-and-riches Major League Baseball look like the revenue-sharing-is-king National Football League.

Last year the University of Texas had 35 times as much revenue as the University of Toledo, the lowest revenue school that went to a bowl during this period.

The current bowl system perpetrates a myth there is a single Division 1A in college football that includes teams in both BCS and non-BCS bowls. There clearly are two very different levels of financial competition within Division 1A.

Utah's breakthrough season is nice story for those who like to pull for the underdog. But it just shows how great the gap is between the haves and have nots in college football.