The little guys are the ones who don't have a BCS guarantee, thus no BCS money every year. The money the Mountain West has with it's bowl guarantees pales in comparison to the SEC. A playoff, while making more money in total would be split evenly, thus reducing the individual payouts that the SEC teams gets due to guaranteed bowl bids (currently the highest of all conferences).This depends on who you consider the little guys.
Every bowl game currently gets divied up among the conference teams, except for ND of course.