The Bowl Championship Series (BCS), the current method of selecting the champion of the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of Division 1 college football, is the electoral college of college sports. It’s an archaic, arbitrary and asinine system that the fossils of college athletics cling on to for tradition and college presidents defend for profits.
It’s so ridiculous, in fact, that in an interview with ESPN during his presidential campaign, Barack Obama mentioned that he is against the system and would try to change it.
So, it is no big surprise, then, that on Friday, BCS officials were summoned to
It was all reminiscent of when Major League Baseball was likewise called to the principal’s office in the capital to explain itself in the light of steroid allegations. And much like that time, the BCS officials did a poor job of defending itself. We should, according to Rep. Joe Barton of
This, however, is not the issue. Whether or not referring to two human polls and six computer polls is a good way to determine a championship game is a good system ‘- and it isn’t ‘- is a moot point in the face of a much larger issue:
Why is Congress still snooping around our sports leagues?
Up until this point, it’s been fine. Getting rid of steroids? Good, they’re illegal. Changing a playoff system because, according to Barton, ‘it’s like communism?’ That’s pushing it a little.
I mean, as a sports fan, I would be a big proponent of both of these changes. However, if Congress sets a precedent that they can waltz into a private sports league and bend it to their will, that’s ridiculous.
‘It’s probably better than a 50 percent chance that if we don’t see some action in the next two months of a voluntary switch to a playoff, you’ll see this bill,’ Barton told BCS officials about a bill that would change the current system in college football, essentially telling them that, if they don’t scrap the system, the government will do it for them.
I’ll be damned if we live in a world of subsidized sports. It’s the one place where people can go to avoid all of the crap that comes with politics.
First, they’ll get rid of steroids, which is good for the kids. Then it’s the BCS, which would be sweet. But, if this were to continue, there would be nothing to stop the government from swooping in and putting a salary cap in baseball, banning fights in hockey, making basketball players wear helmets or go youth soccer on us and say that everybody has to play.
What makes this an even more ridiculous issue is that the NCAA already has an effective playoff system in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), the division in which your Minutemen play.
College presidents and BCS officials, though, don’t think that a pre-established, effective system is good enough for the FBS. They claim that the bowl games, like the storied Papajohns.com Bowl, are time-honored traditions that can’t be lost and that ‘the regular season is the postseason.’ Wait, what?
Officials on the panel said that the current system in place for the FBS heavily favors schools that are in the bigger conferences, such as the Big 10, Southeastern Conference and even individual schools like the University of Notre Dame.
This is a good gesture by Congress to fix what is really a broken system. However, there is an institution that monitors college football, the National College Athletic Association (NCAA).
Normally, the NCAA would fix an issue like this. The issue, though, is who the system benefits. Because of the current system that has 34 ‘bowl games’ to end the season, more schools get more money because of more nationally televised games. This benefits the college presidents, who have the ultimate decision with NCAA affairs.
Meanwhile, fans are screwed because the NCAA throws 34 postseason football games at them, only one of which is actually meaningful.
So, with no recourse, the government has to come in and fix the issue of an old, broken system that gives money to the larger, more successful, more influential schools in college sports. See the issue?
As much as this should happen, though, it just can’t happen this way.
As soon as Congress gains the ability to manipulate sports, people are going to lose the traditions that made them love things like college football in the first place. All of this because of one really bad tradition that the hierarchy of college presidents will be worse off because of it.
This is a situation where the potential for change is so good, yet the implications down the road might make us miss the good ol’ days where we had crappy sports systems.
‘ Yeah, they might have been crappy systems. But they’re our crappy systems.
Nick O’Malley is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].
