Obama Wants Playoffs

A major college football bowl game’s donation to a political candidate is an improper use of its money, a group said Friday.

The Fiesta Bowl, one of four major Bowl Championship Series (BCS) games, gave former Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.) $2,000 to help retire his legal debt in advance of his primary challenge of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)

PlayoffPAC, a political group that wants a playoff system to replace the BCS, said Friday that the contribution should spark an investigation into the bowl’s political activity.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/fundraising/92783-anti-bcs-group-upset-with-bowls-donation-to-hayworth

Q: You’ve obviously coached at Division I-A at Auburn, but also at other levels. Could a playoff system work in I-A?

A: I think playoffs would be great for Division I-A football. It’s been great for everyone else. I think you should have them. There’s no reason we cannot have bowls included and use those in the process of having playoffs. There’s no question Division I-A football should be played in a playoff. That’s the only way to have a national champion.

Q: How would you organize it?

A: You always hear four (teams), but I’m a big proponent that you start at eight. You start at eight, take seven top bowls, you go to the Saturday and Sunday closest to Christmas and you play two games on Saturday, two games on Sunday. So you have the top eight games playing four games in four top bowls, then the four winners play two games on Jan. 1 and the national championship is played on the eighth.

It would be the top seven bowls and, just like the BCS they have now, you would take those bowls or whichever bowls bid for those games. Every year they could rotate those things around. The other dates, the other bowls exist just like the NIT does.

http://www.ajc.com/sports/five-questions-terry-bowden-465350.html

Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski took a shot at college football on Sunday and may have provided testimony for any future lawsuits against the Bowl Championship Series.

Krzyzewski said there was no way a team such as Butler could make it to the championship game in football.

“It’s a completely different animal,” Krzyzewski said. “And they don’t have a system that would allow a smaller school to get into the spotlight with the BCS. They know what the heck they’re doing as far as monopoly.”

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/04/sports/la-sp-0405-ncaa-notes-20100405

Washington » Two high-ranking senators are demanding a peek at the inner workings of college football’s Bowl Championship Series, just the latest move in an ongoing campaign to force changes in the way the national champion is crowned.

In a letter sent Tuesday to the BCS executive director, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Finance Committee chairman Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said they have “ongoing concerns” that BCS leaders have not been forthcoming in explaining how their system operates.

“Legal and antitrust concerns aside, I think it’s clear that the BCS is fundamentally unfair and harmful to schools, students, college football fans and consumers throughout the country,” Hatch said in a statement. “At the very least, I think the architects of the BCS should provide the public with more information to dispel the notion that the system is explicitly designed to favor certain teams while disfavoring others.”

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_14640573

Big legal troubles could be in store for the college football playoff system that the Utah attorney general says disadvantages his and other states.

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said Tuesday that the Bowl Championship Series could face multistate litigation — and even federal antitrust action — over the way the BCS chooses its championship game participants.

“This could be a multi-hundred million lawsuit,” Shurtleff told Legal Newsline, adding that litigation would be a last resort for him. “Ultimately the goal is not to get money but to get them to change the system to be more competitive.”

http://www.legalnewsline.com/news/225870-utah-ag-takes-football-antitrust-case-to-holder-varney

Strange BCS bedfellows

Facing frustration, stalemate and outright defeat on numerous fronts — that isn’t the only way of looking at his first year in office, but it seems to have some currency in the media of late — you’d think President Obama and his administration would be looking for an easy win, maybe some change and some hope, right about now.

We have just the thing for them.

It’s a sure thing that would allow the Democrats to seize the initiative, to work in a genuinely bipartisan way with the Republicans and to produce a popular and beneficial change for the nation. It is, of course, the Bowl Championship Series, an issue that Obama discussed repeatedly during the campaign in 2008 but has left on the back burner ever since.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?page=munson/100211

A political group founded last year to oppose the existing college football playoff system struggled to raise funds in first year of operation.

According to Federal Elections Commission (FEC) reports filed by Playoff PAC, the committee only raised $5,974 in cash and in-kind contributions last year and had only three contributions of $200 or more.

The group was founded in September amid much fanfare on Capitol Hill because it was backed by former Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), who oppose the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) system that critics say make it almost impossible for small schools to win a national championship.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/80725-anti-bcs-group-struggles-to-raise-funds-in-first-year

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is considering several steps that would review the legality of the controversial Bowl Championship Series, the Justice Department said in a letter Friday to a senator who had asked for an antitrust review.

In the letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch, obtained by The Associated Press, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote that the Justice Department is reviewing Hatch’s request and other materials to determine whether to open an investigation into whether the BCS violates antitrust laws.

“Importantly, and in addition, the administration also is exploring other options that might be available to address concerns with the college football postseason,” Weich wrote, including asking the Federal Trade Commission to review the legality of the BCS under consumer protection laws.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=4870657

WASHINGTON – Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, is asking President Obama to recognize the championship Boise State University football team at the White House for its undefeated season.

In a Jan. 14, 2010 letter to the president, Hatch said the Boise State Broncos are every bit as deserving of that invitation to the White House as Bowl Champion Series champion Alabama, especially since both teams were undefeated and the NCAA has not instituted a playoff system to decide a true national champion.

http://hatch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressReleases.Detail&PressRelease_id=2e992a81-1b78-be3e-e040-5c57d88ff024

Ohio State president Gordon Gee has offered colorful quotes over the years about college football’s Bowl Championship Series (BCS). He once declared, in Charlton Heston-like fashion, that he would cling to the BCS status quo until playoff supporters wrenched it from his “cold, dead hands.” Weeks ago, he provided another memorable line in a Toledo Blade interview: “[E]veryone is being rewarded in this [BCS] system, plus there’s a mystery to it. I love the elegance of the mystery.”

For Mr. Gee and other men of mystery, there’s much to love about the BCS.

Consider the BCS’s opaque finances. Those must be a Gee favorite. The BCS controls an enormous amount of money – its members signed a four-year contract with broadcaster ESPN rumored to be worth $500 million, a $180 million increase over its previous deal. Despite the fact that its revenues impact public education budgets, the BCS has never revealed its total income or revenue distribution scheme under this new, larger contract. And precious little information is available about the group’s spending.

http://www.realclearsports.com/articles/2010/01/09/mystery_of_bcs_not_much_to_love_about_96597.html