Than the contract bowls payout.

In years the Rose is not a semifinal game they pay out about $80m combined to B1G and PAC ($40m each plus the $4m participation amount).

Sugar does the same for B12 and SEC.

Orange pays ACC and whichever B1G or SEC #2/3 about $27m each.

So a $10m bowl may not be as enticing as you think.

Those teams also get the most money from CFP TV contract which comes to about $50m to each conference. (see some more detail in this post)

https://www.cougarboard.com/board/message.html?id=12417348

I sometimes have a hard time believing they would leave BYU out over the $4m payout of a single NY6 game. But these conferences and teams have built a budget on spending this money freely and even over extending themselves on upgrades of funds yet to come. And then this year comes along and we know they mentioned the possibility of reducing NY6/Semi-final payouts. How much if any will the CFP TV revenue be reduced? And the contract bowls payout that is separate to the P5s?

This year I really do believe that perhaps $4M is enough for them to be the only thing to fight over and reason enough for them to do a horrendous job ranking BYU just to keep them out. (pandemic causing lost revenues due to ticket sales, Rose/Sugar are semi-final so no additional contract bowl payout to those 4 conferences, etc)

No the real reason is not $4m in any given year. It is purely the perception of power (which you did state as one reason) they do not want to give up. They do not want to have an open door or question of more inclusion for future contract negotiations. They don't want any future pie divided more than they already are...for goodness sake they already feel like they are "giving away" an unwarranted $100m a year so that they can keep their $54-100m per P5 conference each year.

So just my opinion of course but like I said - I don't think it is normally about $4m to an outsider in most years...it is more about the potential change in perception and the resulting negotiations should that happen for future contracts which might provide more money to others instead of them keeping it...

And again, $10m in most years may not be enough to entice them.

That said, I believe under the current plan "access" is to be had by securing a contract with an existing NY6 bowl. ND has their own contract with the Orange bowl (in years they are not in the ACC like this year). They are part of the contract opposite the ACC representative along with B1G/SEC #2/3. That spot is supposed to go to the highest ranked of the 3 with the target for it to be evenly split through out the 12 year contract of the CFP.

So if BYU were to secure a separate contract with the Fiesta bowl for example (for the next CFP contract cycle) then that would make BYU part of the system similar to the way ND is. Same thing if the AAC were to secure a contract with the Cotton/Peach bowl it would secure them as a P6. However, unfortunately, I believe if that were in the works the current P5 would likely just drop those 2 bowls in their next contract negotiations and pick up something like Citrus/Sun bowl... The hungry cabal will always feed themselves only from the main table and others can eat their scraps from the trash...