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GREENSBORO -- The nation might be facing the likelihood of a recession now, but life was good at ACC headquarters during the 2006-07 tax year.

The league disbursed $137.5 million to its 12 member schools in the tax year ending June 30, 2007, according to federal returns made available this week. The increase of 5.7 percent over 2005-06 allocations is the largest since an 11.7 percent jump from 2001-02 to 2002-03.

The boost is not enough to cover increases in the members' overall costs of running major sports programs, but it seldom serves that purpose and is not expected to do so.

The 2006-07 year was the ACC's second with 12 members and the football championship game, the centerpiece of a television contract that delivered $39.2 million to the league during the year. That's a 69 percent increase from the 2003 season, the final one with nine teams. Virginia Tech and Miami joined the conference in July 2004, and Boston College followed a year later.

"The financial realities of where we are have been right on target with the analysis before we expanded," said ACC commissioner John Swofford. "It's pretty much where we expected to be."

The ACC's total income, nearly half of which comes from football and men's basketball television contracts, considerably outpaced estimates dated May 1, 2007, but that's misleading. Those projections, for example, listed $16.38 million in probable revenue from football bowl games. The conference first surpassed $17 million in bowl revenue for the 1998 season and has enjoyed steady increases since. The 2006 season brought nearly $29 million from bowl games.

As a result, total revenue of $159,753,654 beat the projections by 33.5 percent, and cash allocated to the membership was 27 percent greater than the estimates.

The low-balling is common practice in major college sports. That's why the ACC doesn't really need a second entrant in the Bowl Championship Series, an approximately $4 million benefit it has yet to reap, in order to be solvent. If the conference gets an at-large entrant, the money would be pure windfall.

The tax report also paints a clear picture of the ACC's new financial landscape. Basketball was the chief breadwinner as recently as 2003-04, but expansion, which created a new revenue stream with the football championship game, has tipped the scales.

Money directly attributable to football accounted for 58 percent of income for the past fiscal year.

General conference revenue is distributed almost equally to the 12 members. Boston College ($8.789 million) didn't get as much as the rest of its brethren in 2006-07 because it wasn't yet fully vested under the terms of its entry agreement. The current fiscal year will be the first in which the Eagles will get a full share.

Wake Forest took in more than anybody else -- $12.47 million -- because its football championship led to a trip to the Orange Bowl, which entails greater travel expenses than any other ACC-affiliated bowl game.

Revenue from the league ultimately took care of more than one-third of Wake's total athletics spending, according to paperwork the school filed with the U.S. Department of Education.

Boston College (15.7 percent) was the least reliant on conference contributions.

Contact Rob Daniels at 373-7028 or rob.daniels @news-record.com