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

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

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

As Boise State was beating TCU in Monday’s Fiesta Bowl title, a second, equally competitive game was shaping up between a new PAC pushing for a college football playoff system and Ari Fleischer, the new hired gun for the colleges.

Playoff PAC — created in October to advocate for the abolition of the Bowl Championship Series system — launched its first commercial Monday to coincide with the bowl game between two non-BCS conference schools. Though the commercial primarily ran online, the PAC also bought airtime in the Boise, Dallas and Salt Lake City markets.

“We see ourselves as an aggregator, a central hub, for this effort,” Matt Sanderson, one of Playoff PAC’s co-founders, told POLITICO.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0110/Fleischer_vs_PAC_in_bowl_brawl.html

Some conservative commentators are up in arms about Rep. Joe Barton’s (R-Texas) bill to knock down college football’s Bowl Championship Series (BCS). George Will, Doug Bandow and others penned columns this month decrying a “government takeover” of college football and even intimating that Barton forsook his conservative ideals by undertaking this effort.

I share these commentators’ preference for limited regulation. And I agree that government’s reach extends too far in many areas of American life. The feds’ red tape-filled excursions into labor relations, corporate governance and now healthcare are problematic. But those misadventures have nothing to do with what’s happening in college football reform. We shouldn’t reflexively mislabel Mr. Barton’s worthwhile endeavor simply because it offers a convenient occasion to throw stones at President Barack Obama’s ambitions in unrelated areas.

Rep. Barton’s push for college football reform is in line with conservative principles because conservatism is more than rote rejection of any government involvement. Conservatism means limiting government to constitutionally authorized action that serves an important purpose, requires minimal public-sector involvement and bolsters private competition and self-reliance. College football reform fits squarely within conservatism’s framework.

http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/74567-conservative-case-for-college-football-reform

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

A new political action committee plans to run ads this week pushing for a playoff system for college football.

Playoff PAC says it will run the ads in Dallas, Salt Lake City and Boise, Idaho ahead of Thursday’s national championship game between Texas and Alabama. The ad highlights the fact that two undefeated teams, TCU and Boise State, are not getting a chance to play for the title. The two schools face off Monday night in the Fiesta Bowl.

The ad also includes comments from Bill Hancock, the executive director of the Bowl Championship Series, saying not everyone can play in a championship game.

http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory?id=9474749

Video: http://www.playoffpac.com/media/

College football’s Bowl Championship Series is built on the assumption that the “automatic qualifying” or “AQ” conferences (ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Pac-10, SEC) and Notre Dame are categorically better than all the others, like the Mountain West Conference.

It’s why Notre Dame has had the same number of BCS Board votes as the 51 “non-AQ” schools combined. It’s why Georgia Tech’s Orange Bowl appearance will earn the ACC $18 million, but TCU’s Fiesta Bowl berth will fetch the MWC only $9 million split with four other non-AQ conferences. And it’s why one-loss Florida and Oklahoma teams got a shot at last year’s BCS title game ahead of undefeated Utah.

Anyone watching college football this past year, though, saw plainly that there’s no talent or quality-of-play disparity great enough to warrant such disparate postseason payouts and competitive opportunities. Utah kicked off 2009 by dominating SEC powerhouse Alabama. Non-AQ teams then scored convincing wins over California, Clemson, Oklahoma, Oregon, Oregon State and Virginia.

A growing body of evidence shows the BCS is a farce.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705355832/Evidence-against-BCS-system-grows.html

A group dedicated to creating a college football playoff system has filed a complaint against the Fiesta Bowl for allegedly violating election laws.

Playoff PAC, a federal political action committee created by six college football fans with political expertise — including Matthew Sanderson, former campaign finance counsel to Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) presidential campaign — filed a complaint with the Arizona secretary of state’s office Tuesday after the Arizona Republic reported that five current and former Fiesta Bowl employees were illegally reimbursed after making political contributions.

A congressional committee called in some of the keepers of the Bowl Championship Series for explanations this past spring. A Democratic congressman, Bobby Rush of Illinois, chaired the hearing. A Texas Republican, Joe Barton of Ennis, characterized the BCS as “like Communism: You can’t fix it.” A Texas Democrat, Gene Green of Houston, brought a Houston Cougars helmet to the proceedings.

“This,” Green said, “goes across party lines.”

The good news for those who would like the BCS to suffer an excruciating death is that members of Capitol Hill are asking hard questions about why the highest level of college football does not have a playoff system. The bad news for BCS detractors is that Rush, Barton and Green were the only ones who saw fit to attend that particular hearing.

To BCS administrator Bill Hancock, it sounded like echoes of seasons past.

“Politicians have discussed this many times,” Hancock said. “I guess in the real world, we wish everybody loved it. They don’t. Some people don’t like apple pie and motherhood.”

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/college/6712367.html