Big Government isn’t happy with Big Football.
Probably taking their cue from a certain President, who a couple of years ago indicated he favored a playoff system, the U. S. Justice Department may be about to launch a serious investigation into college football’s Bowl Championship Series (BCS) system.
Or it may be just more politicizing, this administration again grabbing a few headlines, waving a trial balloon, reading the polls before fading back into the woodwork after a few months. Still one ignores federal involvement at their folly.
“Serious questions continue to arise suggesting that the current Bowl Championship Series (DCS) system may not be conducted consistent with the competition principles expressed in the federal antitrust laws,” said anti-trust chief Christine Varney in a letter to the NCAA, asking if the organization was looking into a playoff system.
BCS Executive Director Bill Hancock, an Oklahoma graduate, tried to laugh it off, suggesting that the Justice Department was wasting taxpayer money by looking into “how college football games are played.”
Hancock ignores recent turmoil created by the proposed or actual realignment of major conferences to take advantage of BCS dollars, wreaking havoc with some traditional rivalries, and threatening to destroy some conferences and college programs.
The current system also ignores the fact that playoffs are the best way to determine championships, occurring in almost every area of high school, college and professional sports. Division 1 football being the exception. It also makes scheduling regular season games very difficult for some schools in a system that doesn’t reward improvement, loads out-of-conference schedules with patsies and deprives many fans of better, more competitive games.
The BCS system is dominated by few college football powers using their considerable clout to protect their turf at the expense of the rest of us. The issue of leveling the playing field by creating a playoff system may soon take on new dimensions.
We can always hope.