College Football - BSC

We're not quite sure what to make of the latest anti-BCS sabre rattling coming out of Washington. In case you haven't heard, a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee, charged with, among other things, regulating America's sports industry, announced last Friday that it would conduct a hearing on the BCS later this week, after the bowl pairings were announced

Part of us wonders if they shouldn't be spending time on more pertinent social matters on Capitol Hill, and that this particular committee has better things to do than talk about college football (such as unraveling the Medicaid mess, one of the main tosports-articles/pics on its current agenda). The sports fan in us is, though, is intrigued that Congressman Joe Barton (R-Texas), chairman of the subcommittee, at least thinks the BCS is worth a little more probing and discussion. Indeed, a full page on the committee's website is devoted to the BCS topic.

"College football is not just an exhilarating sport, but it is a billion-dollar business as well that Congress cannot ignore," said Congressman Barton, a sports-minded, ex-Texas A&M Aggie. "Too often the college season ends with sniping and controversy, rather than clear winners and losers.

"Four of the BCS's seven seasons have ended in dispute. The current system of determining number one appears deeply flawed. I don't have legislation in mind, and I hope none will be necessary. It is my hope that this hearing will foster a full and open discussion of the BCS system as well as possible improvements."

Well, if we had a dime for every House or Senate subcommittee hearing that amounted to nothing, we'd be rich. So we're not going to hold our breath that anything is going to come from this particular subcommittee's curiosity. But the fact that a veteran, influential, 11-term Congressman such as Barton, who is anything but a wallflower in the House of Representatives, wants to poke around a little more, certainly adds a little extra tabasco sauce to the BCS debate that already drew the Senate's attention a few years ago when the "non" BCS schools were threatening the big football schools as best they could. And that threat two years ago, posed, ironically, by Tulane's president Scott Cowen, did result in some adjustments by the BCS schools, who were fearful of a mammoth class-action suit that could have been filed by the non-BCS schools, and were anxious for the Senate watchdogs to "lose their scent" on the matter. Wisely, they made minor alterations in their process by at least making it possible for a non-BCS school to break into one of the big bowls (which the Mountain West's unbeaten Utah finally did last season), temporarily satisfying Cowen and his constituents. Adjustments or not, however, the big-money bowl deck still remains stacked heavily in favor of the BCS schools and Notre Dame. (For more on our opinion of the Irish's place at the BCS table, check out our "Extra Points" feature in last week's final regular-season issue of The Gold Sheet EXTRA!). And Cowen's words from 2003 ("This system was concocted by 63 schools at the expense of 54 others") continue to ring true today.

We'll let Barton's subcommittee do its work, and wait to see what unfolds. But, once again, the validity of the entire BCS process has come under scrutiny. Can you think of another major sporting event or tournament that continues to generate the sort of controversy of the BCS? Do the House and Senate ever waste much time on other college athletic endeavors?

As it relates to us, we've lost much of our innocence in the playoff vs. BCS debate, and for that we are a bit sad. In years past, we used to take up a lot of space in our publications, outlining possible (and very plausible) football playoff scenarios. We'd be truly excited that we outlined something that could work, and were always sure to include an analogy of how the college basketball community might take to scrapping its hugely-popular tournament and all of the related "March Madness" fun for a college football-like bowl scenario. To this day, we still take solace in the fact that true hoop fans who chewed on that idea for a moment never liked how it tasted.

Eventually, however, we were educated on what really is going on behind the scenes with college football and what motivates the powers-that-be in the game to avoid a playoff at all costs. And we realized that continuing to rail for a playoff and construct scenarios where a postseason tournament could work was simply wasting space. After all, we remembered as far back as Sports Illustrated's College Football Preview issue in 1965, when the featured story included a rather compelling argument for a playoff, and how it might look (SI's '65 model included 8 teams)—and realized we were really no closer to a playoff than we were 40 years ago.

Nowadays, our main complaint rests with the often-shallow mainstream sports media, which, for the most part (with the notable exception of ESPN's informed Chris Fowler), has continued to ignore the real reason why there isn't going to be a playoff anytime soon, and too often either misses the point entirely or falls for the pro-BCS propaganda hook, line, and sinker.

Such as...

The BCS is only about matching the number one and two teams in the country in a bowl game. The season is already too long. Student-athletes don't need to miss more class time. The bowl system would be destroyed by a playoff. The NCAA doesn't want a football playoff.

Well, if the BCS is only about matching the top two teams in the country (which it hasn't done a very good job of doing, as Congressman Barton reminds us), then why are there three, and soon to be four, other big-payout BCS bowl games? If the season is too long, then why have the colleges (with the NCAA's blessing) agreed to permanently add a 12th game to schedules beginning next season (and that's going to be 13 or more for teams playing a game in Hawaii, conference title games, and bowls)? Are there any complaints about the Divisions I-AA, II, and III football student-athletes missing too much class time? Why couldn't the bowls continue to be played if there was a playoff? Do the Peach, Independence, and every other bowl outside of the BCS have anything to do with the national championship these days, anyway? Doesn't a fairly democratic playoff system peacefully coexist with the schools in every other NCAA sport? And if the NCAA doesn't want a I-A football tournament, do we assume that it doesn't want "March Madness" and its big-money basketball festival, either?

The hidden "treasure" that is the answer to the existence of the BCS at the expense of a playoff is within the preceding sentence. Of course the NCAA would love to run a football tournament, just as it does its hoops event every March, and every other sport it sanctions, including Divisions I-AA, II, and III in football. But hell is going to freeze over before the big Division I-A schools are going to let the NCAA administer such an extravaganza.

What's the deal? Like most business scenarios, it's mostly about money—and power. And the big BCS schools, already miffed that the NCAA takes such a healthy cut of the proceeds from its annual basketball showcase every March, are not about to let it exert similar control over a football tournament (which its bylaws state it must do if such a tourney would involve more than 4 teams). As it stands now, the big-money TV and ad deals negotiated for "March Madness" and its "Final Four" are all done by the NCAA, which "owns" the basketball tournament. With those alliances well-established, the schools aren't in a position in hoops to do what they can in football. But all of that negotiating in football is done by the schools, which, in a de facto sense, "own" the BCS. And they have no intention to ever relinquish the ability to call the shots and keep the lion's share of the proceeds for themselves. In a nutshell, there's your reason why we have a BCS, and don't have a playoff.

It's still a curious puzzle, because advertising and marketing sources have confirmed that college football's postseason, in its present state, is still as much as "40-50% undersold." Meaning that, by their calculations, there's a lot more money to be made from a full-blown football playoff. But herein is the "power" portion of the BCS equation, because in a playoff scenario, it's still unclear how much more money the big schools would rake in if the NCAA was negotiating the deal and taking its healthy cut like it does in hoops. As mentioned above, the BCS schools have no intention of empowering the NCAA any further, and unless the windfalls are going to be enormous, they will never be motivated to change.

The most recent indication that things aren't going to deviate anytime soon came just over a year ago, when ABC, with support from some key advertisers, was pushing the BCS to add a "plus one" scenario to its bowl mix in the new TV package that would begin in the 2006 season, wherein the top four teams would be involved in a mini-playoff, the winner of those games to then meet in a juicy national title game. In its arrogance, the BCS schools instead were pushing to simply add another big-money bowl game to the mix, with no playoff-like "plus one" scenario in the equation. Apparently, the schools were spooked to take even one step closer to the sort of playoff that force them to relinquish power to the NCAA. ABC called the BCS's bluff and told the big schools what they could do with their expanded bowl, but no "plus one," idea.

Yet we'll never know if the BCS schools would have been forced to accept "plus one" because Rupert Murdoch's Fox Network, and its sports department head honcho, David Hill, decided to bite on the BCS bait. And, beginning next year, get ready for a BCS that will feature an extra bowl rotating among its four big games (Orange, Fiesta, Sugar, Rose) that will serve as the designated BCS title game. That means to get ready for two different Fiesta Bowls next season. Bet you can't wait for that, can you?

So, any hope of a college football playoff, even a mini-one with just four teams (which would be better than nothing), is scotched for at least another five years by a couple of chaps from Australia. Only in America, we suppose.

Ironically, were a "playoff vs. BCS" vote to be cast by college football fans, we think it would make George McGovern's showing vs, Richard Nixon in 1972 look competitive by comparison. The vast majority of college fotoball fans would love a playoff. But the consumers of college football aren't about to force the issue in the only way that could get noticed—some form of boycott—that would force the greedy BCS schools to start thinking about a playoff. It's not worth the time and effort. College football is such an exciting spectacle that it would be wildly popular regardless, no matter what about bowls, the BCS, or a playoff. And taking full advantage of that runaway popularity are the BCS schools, who have devised a scenario where the rich simply get richer.

So, for now, we'll just have to sit back and live with the hypocrisy of the big schools and their BCS, continue to dream about any playoff (even that "plus one" idea would do), and endure the mostly-shallow coverage the BCS receives from a good number of sports media. We'll just cross our fingers that Congressman Barton's subcommittee digs up something to expose the BCS for the charade that it is.

Give 'em hell, Joe!

January, 2007 Addendum: We encourage readers to check out some of the recent commentary on the web pages of Yahoo! Sports that give updated insight into the whole BCS mess. In particular, the Big Ten (especially its commissioner, Jim Delany), the Pac-10 and Rose Bowl are identified as the main obstacles in getting a true playoff, or even a "plus-one" playoff, instituted. We have also pointed a finger at the Big Ten, Pac-10 and Rose Bowl in the past, and even expanded upon their impact (mostly regrettable) in the ever-changing college conference landscape, with Penn State's jump into the the Big Ten and abandonment of its old Eastern alliance as one of the first dominoes to fall in the reconfiguration of college sports conferences. We wholeheartedly concur with Yahoo's findings, and agree that the Big Ten and Pac-10 schools are concerned only with their well-being and are impediments to any sort of playoff. If there are "bad guys" in the whole debate, it's those conferences and the Rose Bowl. But, short of the sports-starved public abandoning the traditional Pasadena classic, there's not much that can be done. Which is a shame.

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