Obama Wants Playoffs

The BCS has five years left, at most. The expiration date might not be specific, but events of the past month made it clear that one will ultimately be affixed to the mongrel that is college football’s championship system.

Complaints about the clubby BCS and the clamor for a playoff reached critical mass in May. First came congressional hearings in which the BCS was equated with communism. Then Yahoo! Sports reported that boasts of charitable donations generated by bowl games were greatly exaggerated. Right after that, the American Football Coaches Association said it planned to take its ballots for the coaches poll, a pillar of the BCS selection process, back underground next year, withholding voters’ names for the first time since 2004.

More investigations are on the way, including a Judiciary subcommittee hearing asking whether the big conferences’ grip on the BCS constitutes a monopoly. Let’s save some time here. Yes. If antitrust law can’t reform this system — which has shut undefeated teams out of the title game because they didn’t have the right conference pedigree — then we should just take the statutes off the books.

http://www.cbssports.com/columns/story/11799725

Through the first two days at the Southeastern Conference spring meetings, Commissioner Mike Slive has suggested that Congress focus on Iraq instead of college football; South Carolina Coach Steve Spurrier said that President Barack Obama might have enough pull to one day create a college football playoff.

Now mix in the Mountain West Conference’s playoff proposal and the new ruling on the Coaches’ Poll’s future anonymity and you’ve got yourself an entertaining week. The dynamics are almost enough to outshine Lane Kiffin.

This week, the SEC discussed the Mountain West’s national request for an eight-team playoff.

“The conference hasn’t taken any position on it,” Slive said.

http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/college/football/view/2009_05_28_BCS_talk_nearly_outshines_Lane_Kiffin_chatter/srvc=home&position=recent

The BCS in Congress: If you can’t beat ‘em, accuse ‘em of perjury

a pair of my muckraking Yahoo! Sports colleagues, Dan Wetzel and Josh Peter, recalled Fox’s comments well enough to undermine them completely:

In fact, 10 bowl games are privately owned and one is run by a branch of a local government. The remaining 23 games enjoy tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service, but combined to give just $3.2 million to local charities on $186.3 million in revenue according to their most recent federal tax records and interviews with individual bowl executives.

One would-be reformer who might be interested in that information is Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, the ranking “nonprofit cop,” who just learned the results of the Congressional Budget Office review of college athletic programs’ tax-exempt status that he ordered back in 2007. But the first Congressman Wetzel and Peter went to with their investigation was, of course, Texas Rep. Joe Barton, the ranking “BCS cop,” who didn’t take the news in a very forgiving tone:

“That doesn’t seem like something that’s really geared toward giving to charity, does it?” said Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) after being presented with Yahoo! Sports’ findings.

“It’s perjury if it’s knowingly said,” Barton said of the sworn testimony, which he called “misleading.” “It’s also contempt of Congress. You’ve got to give [him] some sort of due process, but ultimately the remedy is to hold [him] in contempt of Congress on the House floor or send it to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution of perjury under oath.”

According to Wetzel’s and Peter’s (lengthy and detailed) report, Fox submitted a written statement that his testimony was “a good faith estimate based on information initially supplied by the FBA [Football Bowl Association],” but another member of the FBA, Bruce Binkowski, said “the organization doesn’t compile such figures and in literature doesn’t assign a dollar amount to the bowls’ charitable donations because ‘we just don’t know.’” Fox reportedly said last week he “needed a day” to confirm the figures to the reporters, but didn’t respond

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/blog/dr_saturday/post/The-BCS-in-Congress-If-you-can-t-beat-em-accu?urn=ncaaf,165911

Obama doesn’t understand BCS ‘complexity’

Asked Tuesday for his thoughts on the president’s repeated overtures for a playoff, Delany said he respectfully disagrees.

“It’s very hard to be disagreeable with a popular president, that’s my first thought,” Delany said. “The reality is that he has a pulpit and people listen. I think his strength is probably basketball brackets.”

Obama filled out an NCAA tournament bracket in men’s basketball and accurately predicted that North Carolina, a heavy favorite, would win the title.The president initially voiced his wish for a football playoff last fall while campaigning and has remained an advocate. “He probably has an interest as a fan,” Delany said. “He’s a scholar and a lawyer and a great politician, but I don’t think he really understands the complexity of the issue.”

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/bigten/2009-05-20-jim-delany-obama-bcs_N.htm

Utah’s senators are worried that the Bowl Championship Series is looking at extending its TV contract by four years, which would lock in a system they say is unfair.

So Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, R-Utah, wrote to the BCS Friday to complain. “We have serious concerns about what appears to be an attempt to preserve the status quo for the foreseeable future,” they said.

They complained that exploring extending the current TV contract comes despite “growing concern among elected officials regarding the BCS system, not to mention the complaints of millions of college football fans and consumer throughout the country.”

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705302362/Hatch-Bennett-new-BSC-complaint.html

The Boise State athletic director said Friday’s congressional hearing is the first step in what could be a long, slow process.

WASHINGTON – The congressman who spearheaded Friday’s hearing on the Bowl Championship Series in a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee demanded a quick transition to a college football playoff.

But Boise State athletic director Gene Bleymaier, one of four people associated with college footballwho testified, said afterward that he doesn’t know if sudden change is realistic. The BCS, a five-bowl system that includes a game that matches the teams ranked Nos. 1 and 2, has awarded its TV rights through January 2014.

“The powers that be are going to decide that,” said Bleymaier, who argued for a playoff that would give an undefeated team like Boise State a shot at the national title. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way to make things happen in a more timely fashion. Right now, the powers that be aren’t interested in change, so it could be a much slower process.”

If nothing else, Bleymaier hopes Friday’s hearing – which attracted just three of the subcommittee’s 32 members – will convince the leaders of the six most powerful conferences, who run the BCS, to study the playoff idea more closely. Boise State is in the Western Athletic Conference, which doesn’t get an automatic bid into BCS games.

Conference commissioners are scheduled to meet in June.

http://www.idahostatesman.com/BSUFOOTBALL/story/754971.html

The bloodbath Friday at the Rayburn House Office Building offered a faint glimmer of hope for everyone who wants to see a college football playoff. Maybe nothing will come out of the public evisceration of BCS coordinator John Swofford and Alamo Bowl president Derrick Fox by Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) in a House subcommittee meeting. Maybe the BCS will continue to frustrate college football fans for decades. Or maybe, just maybe, the wheels have begun to turn toward a more satisfying postseason.

Either way, it sure was fun to watch the BCS supporters squirm Friday.

Friday’s hearing put the fat back in pork barrel politics. Barton represents a ton of Texas fans in his district, and most of them are royally peeved the Longhorns got left out of the BCS title mix last year. Orrin Hatch, who leads the anti-BCS crusade in the Senate, represents Utah, where the flagship state university enjoyed a 12-0 regular season but had a zero-percent chance of playing for the national title in 2008. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama can spout off about a playoff because he knows it’s the lone issue most Republicans will join him to support.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/andy_staples/05/01/bcs-hearing/?eref=T1

College football’s perennial armchair-quarterback argument over the need for a clear-cut national champion came to Capitol Hill Friday.

The House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection held a hearing to dissect the Bowl Championship Series, asking whether the model needs to be tweaked, overhauled or done away with altogether.

Four witnesses testified at the morning hearing, including championship series coordinator John Swofford and Alamo Bowl President Derrick Fox; both of whom defended the current system, though Fox conceded that “no system is perfect and the Bowl Championship Series is not perfect.”

Mountain West Conference Commissioner Craig Thompson and Boise State Athletic Director Gene Bleymaier testified that they would like to see the system revamped. Many critics say they want college football to have a playoff system to ensure that a champion is clearly defined.

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, called the Bowl Championship Series format unfair and perhaps took it one step further. “You should either change your name to BES for Bowl Exhibition System or just drop the C and call it the BS system, because it is not about determining the championship on the field.”

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/01/football.bcs/

“It’s probably better than a 50 percent chance that if we don’t see some action in the next two months of a voluntary switch to a playoff,” warned Barton, “you’ll see this bill.”

Barton was speaking directly to BCS coordinator John Swofford, also the commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference, and he was referring to proposed legislation that would prevent the BCS from marketing its final game as the national championship.

Swofford and Alamo Bowl CEO Derrick Fox found themselves on an entirely different playing field on Friday, with congressmen making all the calls. There was no vote, and nothing even remotely resembling an answer, but the fact that college football representatives had taken the time to fly to the nation’s capital, raise their hands and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, elevated the importance of the postseason alongside growing concerns over swine flu and an economic crisis.

“Anytime Congress speaks,” Swofford said, “you take it seriously.”

On the other hand, only three members were doing the speaking, and two of them — Barton and Green — were representing the great football state of Texas with gusto. Committee chairman Bobby Rush, D-Ill., was the only other representative there to ask questions.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=4122741

The winningest coach in the game renewed his call for a four- or eight-team playoff to replace the BCS. He also decried the NCAA decision to force Florida State coach Bobby Bowden to vacate 14 victories in which the Seminoles players were later found to have committed academic fraud.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=4118848