Obama Wants Playoffs

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

Q: How do you feel about playoffs?

A: I really do love it. I cannot think of any reasonable expectations why we would not play a playoff at the Bowl Championship Series level as well. I do believe we should use the bowl sites, but I do not think there’s any justification for us not playing a playoff at every level of football. It’s a lot of fun, it’s just a lot of excitement, it builds the pressure, but I think it’s how the game was supposed to be played. It’s supposed to be won on the field. Mythical national championships are fun to write about, but they’re not much fun to earn.

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/sports_college/2010/03/terry-bowden-bring-on-playoffs-in-bcs.html

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

• Football fever. Thursday’s BCS football championship kicked 30.8 million viewers to ABC, the highest-rated college title game since 2006. NBC‘s NFL wild-card playoff claimed 32.1 million Saturday.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2010-01-14-nielchatter14_ST_N.htm

When the Division I-A head coaches met at the AFCA convention Tuesday, they discussed several important issues facing the sport.

There was talk about academic reform. There was talk about dealing with agents and their influence on athletes. There was talk of player safety and concussions. And of course, there was some talk about the controversial Bowl Championship Series.

American Football Coaches Association executive director Grant Teaff presented the results of a survey of all 120 Division I-A coaches during the meeting. What was found was not surprising: a majority of coaches want to keep the system the way it is.

“Right now, we have a good system,” said Ohio State coach Jim Tressel, whose team has played in three BCS championship games. “That’s not to say we won’t improve it. How it will improve over time we’ll find out, but I wouldn’t be in favor of scraping what we do. There are too many things to keep in mind, bowls, student athlete welfare, all the rest. I wouldn’t start over.”

Teaff said 73 percent of the coaches want to keep the current BCS system the way it is. He also said that 96 of the 120 coaches voted to keep transparency in the final regular-season coaches poll. And 95.7 want to maintain the final coaches poll voting the BCS champion No. 1.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/college/os-coaches-convention-issue-0113-20100112,0,1073733.story

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

With the BCS ramping up efforts to improve its public image, it might want to consider bringing in Alabama nose guard Terrence Cody as a spokesman.

The 365-pound All-American is no fan of the idea of a major college football playoff.

“That’s stupid,” Cody said earlier this week. “I don’t think there should be any playoff. Why should there be a playoff? I mean, in the NFL they’re getting paid to play off and stuff.”

Alabama guard Mike Johnson was lukewarm to the idea, but he could understand why others might want the BCS to expand.

“I can’t complain, coming from one of the better BCS conferences,” Johnson said. “Anytime you’re from the SEC and you go undefeated, you know you’re going to be in (the BCS championship) game. It seems we always get the benefit of the doubt.”

Longhorns defensive lineman Lamarr Houston is a playoff supporter and even offered a way to do it. He said the month most teams spend waiting to play in a BCS game could be used for playoff games.

“I’m sure if you had a couple extra bye weeks in there, maybe two weeks after the season give (the players) a break and then have a championship game in mid-January, I don’t think it would be much different from playing in a bowl game,” he said. “It’d benefit all of college football more and you could have a true champion with no complaints.”

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/college/texas/6804842.html