Playing in a Bowl Championship Series bowl game usually means increased prestige for universities as well as a significant financial and recruiting windfall.

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Pitt's appearance Saturday in the Fiesta Bowl will bring the university plenty of prestige, but maybe not the money and recruiting advantage that most schools get by appearing in a BCS game.

Pitt originally believed it was going to gain $2.5 million for being the Big East's BCS representative plus the $2.25 million each Big East school receives for being a member of a BCS conference. But because there was a four-way tie atop the conference at the end of the regular season -- the Panthers qualified for the conference's automatic berth because they won the tiebreaker -- Pitt, Syracuse, West Virginia and Boston College pooled their respective bowl paydays and split it four ways.

The Gator Bowl payout is $1.6 million, the Insight Bowl is $1.2 million and the Continental Tire Bowl is $1.1 million. Combined with Pitt's $2.5 million, that totals $6.4 million, which split four ways comes out to $1.6 million per school.

Pitt athletic director Jeff Long said that the university will spend $1.6 million almost entirely on Fiesta Bowl expenses. He said flying the team, the band, the cheerleaders and other university parties and housing them for a week in Phoenix will eat up most of that BCS money.

That leaves a profit of about $2.5 million.

"There is a misconception about the dollars," Long said. "I think it's important that people understand that this is not a great windfall for the University of Pittsburgh. So we get that $2.5 million. People say, 'Wow that's a big payday.' But, what you have to keep in mind is that we did lose money from our TV package this year. Bottom line, it's about a wash."

Playing in a BCS bowl game usually is a recruiting bonanza, but Pitt was hurt by its coaching change and the perception of the Big East as a watered-down conference. Former coach Walt Harris had an uncertain future before the season, and when he took the job at Stanford in mid-December, there was a two-week period when recruits didn't know who the coach was going to be.

Hiring Dave Wannstedt last week gives Pitt a chance to jump back in on some recruits, but he and his new staff will be waging an uphill battle. The reason Long set a pre-Christmas deadline on his coaching search was because of recruiting and salvaging something from Pitt's Fiesta Bowl appearance.

"I knew it was important to have Dave's name out there, that he is the coach at Pitt," Long said.

Long said Wannstedt received an NCAA waiver to contact recruits during this dead recruiting period, so Wannstedt is allowed to call and speak with high school seniors who might be considering Pitt.

Wannstedt's challenge will be getting some underrated players who haven't already given a verbal commitment to another program. Most of the top high school recruits have made verbal commitments.

"We still have a few weeks to recruit," Wannstedt said. "It was important that our coaches were talking to the players [during the coaching search]. It was very difficult to sell when they didn't know who was going to be in charge. Now that this is done, I would hope it would have a positive influence on some of the prospects we're recruiting, but we won't know that until signing day."

One thing Wannstedt has going for him is his name. He spent most of the past decade as an NFL head coach, most recently with the Miami Dolphins. Before that, he won a Super Bowl as an assistant coach with the Dallas Cowboys and a national championship as an assistant at the University of Miami.

"Most high school players think they're good enough to play in the NFL," Wannstedt said. "If it's close, these guys can say this guy knows what it takes to win a Super Bowl or a national championship. I would have thought that will be a real positive. I think that will be."

What is certain for Pitt is the positive publicity it will receive by playing on national television in prime time on college football's most-watched day of the year. It might not affect high school seniors, but by playing in its first New Year's Day game in more than two decades, the Panthers have stamped themselves back on the national map.

"When our prospective student-athletes see an opportunity to come here, this is the type of thing that we're going to be playing for," Long said.

"We want to play for the Big East championship every year. I think we're positioned to do that, and I think with Dave on board, it will help us even more. This is what people can expect when they come to the University of Pittsburgh. We want to be a leader of this conference."