Officially the document carries the label "2012 BCS Complimentary Tickets," but for LSU it looks more like the StubHub order from hell, nothing complimentary about it.

Two tickets for the school president to the BCS title game? That's $700. Four for the chancellor? That's $1,400. Les Miles' family? Three-fifty a pop. On and on it goes.

One of the dirty secrets of many bowl games is that almost nothing is cheap. The industry, in this case represented by Sugar Bowl Inc., long ago learned how to squeeze every last penny out of college football. That includes charging even the stars of the show exorbitant prices for tickets.

How about a couple of free ones for the players to give to their parents or girlfriends or high school coaches? Please. The Sugar Bowl instead charged LSU $350 a seat, full price, for every last player request. Total cost: $254,800 on the players alone.

Oh, and the Tiger Marching Band, the one that is contractually obligated to attend bowl week and provide halftime entertainment? With bowls, not even the band gets in free. LSU had to buy tickets for every clarinetist, flutist, tuba player and majorette. Some of the seats, according to the Baton Rouge Advocate, just held the tuba.

That added up to 529 tickets, almost all full price. The bill for the student band to sit was $182,830.

That's $182,830 to get into a venue and give a free show to all the other paying customers.

[Related: All you need to know about the playoff discussions at the BCS meeting]

All in all, the "2012 BCS Complimentary Tickets" document obtained by Yahoo! Sports detailed most of what would wind up being a $526,924 bill LSU owed the Sugar Bowl just for tickets.

It isn't uncommon. Almost every bowl charges schools for everything it can dream up. That's how the industry works: cutthroat capitalism that has made these games and the people that run them rich.

Yet, now athletic directors and conference commissioners say the extreme profiteering is one of the reasons bowl games could be pushed aside as college football's power brokers meet this week in Florida to discuss the future of the postseason.

"Everything has changed in the last couple of years," said an athletic director at a BCS school. "The business practices of the bowl games are of great discussion. … When is enough, enough?

"There's a feeling that it's time to do it ourselves."

After 143 years, the sport is on the verge of a playoff, most likely a four-team entity. The details being hashed out have more to do with who gets to stage the games and whether college football is ready to make a clean break from the bowls with its most profitable games – semifinals and finals.

Plans range from having the semis held on the campus of the higher-seeded team to opening up all three games to bid by any city in the country, effectively turning its back on the major bowls that have controlled the postseason for a century.

There is also discussion about requiring teams to win at least seven games (up from six) to play in a bowl, something that could kill off at least half a dozen of the current 35 bowl games.

The majority of bowl games will continue to operate. However, cutting off the major ones from the lucrative television revenue to the championship-round games will carve into their finances – and thus the high salaries (up to $800,000 per year) and impressive fringe benefits (multiple country club memberships, his and her car allowances) of bowl CEOs.

Story continues