We Demand Playoffs

WASHINGTON — A congressman who wants to see college football adopt a playoff system is comparing the Bowl Championship Series to communism.

Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Texas said Friday that efforts to tinker with the BCS are bound to fail. He told a House hearing that the BCS is like communism and can’t be fixed.

Barton has introduced legislation that would prevent the NCAA from labeling a game a national championship unless it’s the outcome of a playoff system.

The coordinator of the BCS told the panel Friday that a switch to a playoff system — favored by fans, President Barack Obama and some lawmakers — would threaten the existence of celebrated bowl games.

Sponsorships and TV revenue that now go to bowl games would instead be spent on playoff games, “meaning that it will be very difficult for any bowl, including the current BCS bowls, which are among the oldest and most established in the game’s history, to survive,” BCS coordinator John Swofford said in prepared testimony. “Certainly the 29 games that are not part of the BCS would be in peril.”

Swofford was appearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s commerce, trade and consumer protection subcommittee, some of whose members back legislation aimed at prodding the BCS to switch to a playoff system.

Under the BCS, some conferences get automatic bids to participate, and others do not. Conferences that get an automatic bid — the ACC, Big East, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-10 and SEC — get about $18 million each, far more than the non-conference schools. Swofford is also commissioner of the ACC.

Craig Thompson, commissioner of the Mountain West Commission, which does not get an automatic bid, said in prepared testimony that the current system is patently unfair.

“Such economic disparities and anomalies cannot be justified and should not continue,” he said. “Many have said the current BCS system ensures a permanent underclass. They are right.”

The MWC has proposed a playoff system and hired a Washington firm to lobby Congress for changes to the BCS, which currently features a championship game between the two top teams in the BCS standings, based on two polls and six computer ratings.

The MWC proposes, among others things, scrapping the BCS standings and creating a 12-member committee to pick which teams receive at-large bids, and to select and seed the eight teams chosen for the playoff. The BCS has previously discussed, and dismissed, the idea of using a selection committee.

The four current BCS games — the Sugar, Orange, Rose and Fiesta bowls — would host the four first-round playoff games under the proposal. Thompson argued that a playoff system would be a boon for those bowls, because they would help determine the national champion.

Thompson said that under the current system, teams that don’t come from a conference with a guaranteed bid have no realistic chance of winning a BCS championship.

Swofford argued that criticism that the BCS guarantees berths and money to only some conferences “states the situation exactly backward.” Prior to the BCS, he said, the conferences that now have automatic bids were guaranteed an attractive bowl slot for its champion.

“If the BCS were to disappear tomorrow, each of those conferences would return to the marketplace and obtain a similarly attractive bowl slot on its own through individual negotiation, most likely in one of the current BCS games,” he said. But there would no longer be guaranteed annual bowl game pairing the top two ranked teams.

The BCS is in its final season of a four-year deal with the Fox network. A new four-year deal with ESPN, worth $125 million per year, begins with the 2011 bowl games.

The BCS has come under attack from a range of politicians. Last November, then President-elect Obama told “60 Minutes” he would prefer an eight-team playoff system.

“I don’t know any serious fan of college football who has disagreed with me on this,” he said then. “So I’m going to throw my weight around a little bit.”

In the Senate, Utah Republican Orrin Hatch has put the BCS on the agenda for the Judiciary’s antitrust subcommittee this year, and Utah’s attorney general, Mark Shurtleff, is investigating whether the BCS violates federal antitrust laws.

Fans were furious that Utah was bypassed for the national championship despite going undefeated in the regular season. The title game pitted No. 1 Florida (12-1) against No. 2 Oklahoma (12-1); Florida won 24-14 and claimed the title.

Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press

The MWC is at it again, this time sending their playoff proposal to Congress. Will it make a difference? Does anyone in Washington really care? I personally believe momentum is building.

The poll shown is currently running at the link above and has some interesting results. By far, college football fans think BCS reform is either not the business of the United States Congress or Congress has bigger fish to fry.

I’d like to hear some reasons why people think it’s not the business of Congress to be concerned about collusionary financial anti-competitive practices in our country.

I think the BCS problem increasingly falls inside the realm of Congress. If University Presidents have sold their sense of equality and fairness for a bigger cut of football earnings, they deserve to be subject to the law just like anybody else. Microsoft wasn’t allowed to get away with monopolistic behaviors, why should the BCS be allowed to get away with it?

Obama’s unlikely football ally

Over the last several weeks, Obama and the Texas Republican have spoken about Barton’s bill to overhaul the Bowl Game Championship (BCS) series and push for a playoff system. Barton, whose home state University of Texas team got shut out of the college football title game, has called the BCS “deeply flawed,” while the president has admitted the bowl game system needs a facelift.

Rep. Joe Barton basically wants to prevent access to the term “National Championship” unless a playoff is involved. I personally don’t think this idea will get anywhere, but perhaps the added pressure on the BCS can still make a difference.

In an age when public universities can’t afford to hire or give raises to professors, when schools are opening the admissions floodgates to increase cash flow while not providing the infrastructure to help all those incoming students succeed, when public dollars subsidize athletics, elected officials need to ask university presidents why they’re leaving hundreds of millions of dollars on the table by sticking with the BCS instead of switching to a playoff, which could more than triple their money.

Any way you cut it, a playoff makes practical — and economic — sense

The above article played an inspirational role for the WeDemandPlayoffs.com project to some degree, because it finally provided a tangible, adequate reason to ask Congress to get involved.  There are other reasons, but in my opinion, the case Andy Staples makes above has the most juice.

Andy concludes his article with the following:

So if you really want a playoff, call your congressperson. Tell them they don’t need to grandstand. They only need to ask a valid question. Why are university presidents spending our money to subsidize when they already have a way to make millions more?

WeDemandPlayoffs.com is here to aid college football fans in favor of a playoff system in contacting their congressperson.