Obama Wants Playoffs

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — BCS Executive Director Bill Hancock said he would love to meet with President Obama and lay out his case for why a playoff would be bad for college football.

“I think it would be way cool,” Hancock said Wednesday. “If the opportunity presented itself, we would go in a minute. But he has so much else to do, and I don’t mean that in a negative way. He hasn’t said anything about it since Florida went to get its trophy (in 2009).”

http://www.chicagobreakingsports.com/2010/04/bcs-boss-would-love-a-face-to-face-with-obama.html

President Barack Obama on Monday welcomed the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) winner Alabama Crimson Tide football team to the White House.

The number one-ranked Tide won its 13th college football national championship in January, soundly defeating the Texas Longhorns by a score of 37-21.

Obama has also expressed displeasure with the BCS system and has voiced support for a playoff system, but the White House declined to invite Boise State.

http://washingtonscene.thehill.com/in-the-know/36-news/2625-obama-welcomes-college-football-champions-to-the-white-house

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

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

Now we’re getting somewhere.

For nearly two decades, railing against the Bowl Championship Series was like tilting at windmills. The guys who hijacked college football’s postseason in 1992 had no reason to budge. They had TV contracts, sponsors aplenty, college presidents, conference commissioners and chambers of commerce in a handful of cities in their pockets. They even had a quasi-secret formula to justify their decisions, backed by computers powerful enough to run NORAD.

All we had was public opinion.

“It’s like communism,” Texas congressman Joe Barton said about BCS not long ago. “It can’t be fixed.”

Just about everyone, though, from President Barack Obama to the 90 percent of fans who cast votes against the BCS in a recent Sports Illustrated poll, knows what’s required to fix it: a playoff. What they haven’t figured out is the best way to get one.

Thanks to Boise State’s habit of crashing the BCS party, they’re going to get several more chances. Broncos coach Chris Petersen hasn’t lobbied to be No. 1, but there’s no shortage of people willing to take up the cause.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=9491110

Not since the days just after his election as President of the United States have we heard anything from Barack Obama about pushing forward a playoff for college football. The reasons for the silence are obvious – Iraq, the economy, Afghanistan, the economy, health care, the economy, so on and the economy.

The last thing Obama is going to do right now is give his critics fodder by making it look like he’s focused on something as relatively trivial as college football’s postseason.

Yet there is a simple, symbolic and time efficient way for Obama to make a statement against the exclusion and confusion of the Bowl Championship Series. When it comes time to invite the winner of Thursday’s BCS championship game – either Alabama or Texas – for the traditional trip to the White House, he can ask for the 14-0 Boise State Broncos to come also.

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=dw-obamaplayoff010510

BARACK OBAMA WANTED reform. It hasn’t happened yet.

Relax, this isn’t about health care, economic strategy or war stories.

“It is about time we have playoffs in college football,” Obama told a “Monday Night Football” audience on election eve last year.

Apparently there hasn’t been enough time to impeach the Bowl Championship Series. So we press on toward another controversial postseason, filled with enough bowl games to accommodate more than half of the Division I programs.

http://www.mercurynews.com/columns/ci_13784323?nclick_check=1

WASHINGTON — Rep. Joe Barton had a plane to catch, but he wanted to give college football officials a warning before leaving the highly publicized hearing.

Peering down from the podium, the Republican said in his Texas twang that unless the officials took action toward a playoff system in two months, Congress would likely move on his legislation aimed at forcing their hand.

More than three months have passed, and Barton’s bill hasn’t moved. Such is the way with college football and Congress.

For years, lawmakers have railed against the Bowl Championship Series, calling it an unfair way to select a national champion. A lot of righteous thundering, however, has not yielded anything on the legislative front.

http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/story/12057629

While the president welcomed the Florida Gators football team into the White House to congratulate them on their BCS national championship win, he stepped right back into the controversy in college football and continued to push for a change of rules to the Bowl Game Series playoff system, despite opposition from university presidents and NCAA executives.

“I don’t want to stir up controversy.  You guys are the national champions — I’m not backing off the fact we need a playoff system.  But I have every confidence that you guys could have beat anybody else.  And so we’ll see how that plays itself out.”

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/04/obama-risks-gat.html

Mr. President, The Ball Is In Your Court
By Sally Jenkins

1. Liberate college football from the tyranny of the Bowl Championship Series. You’ve pledged to use your muscle to do away with the skewed BCS system and to create an eight-team playoff. Actually, this may be one of the easiest things to accomplish in your first term. Opposition to a playoff comes from the despotic cartel made up by the major football conferences, which seek to hoard the millions of dollars in bowl revenue for themselves — and depend on the tax-exempt status they lobby for in Washington. Here are the names of the college leaders on the BCS Presidental Oversight Committee: Chairman David Frohnmayer (Oregon), Rev. John Jenkins (Notre Dame), Robert Khayat (Mississippi), Mark Nordenberg (Pittsburgh), John Peters (Northern Illinois), Harvey Perlman (Nebraska), Graham Spanier (Penn State) and Charles Steger (Virginia Tech).

These individuals preside over a commercial swindle. According to the Wall Street Journal, the bowls have become a $400 million-a-year industry, and bowl executives earn salaries of between $400,000 and $500,000. The bowls no longer serve any discernable educational purpose — the participating teams often have graduations rates worse than 50 percent, for which they are rewarded with extravagance. Players in this year’s BCS bowls received gifts such as Tourneau watches, Apple iPods and $300 worth of Sony electronics.

Take away their tax exemptions. Hand the BCS college presidents a bunch of 1120 forms and tell them to start filling them out. They’ll buckle.

Additionally, we recommend that the college football season be shortened. Schools begin playing in phony made-for-TV money games in August and the championship isn’t decided until the second week in January. A season should begin in autumn and end on New Year’s Day, so that everyone can get back to school.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/20/AR2009012003559.html