We apologize for not getting to this sooner but believe it or not, it kind of flew beneath our radar.
Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) called hearings last week to address the possibility that the BCS violates federal anti-trust laws because of its “exclusionary” method of selecting teams in which to play in the “fictitious national title game.”
The tipping point for setting up these hearings was the Utah Utes going undefeated last season and getting shut out of the title game, settling instead for the Sugar Bowl where they smacked by two touchdowns an Alabama team that was ranked #1 in the nation before going into their previous game.
Of course, we all know what you are saying: “Don’t these guys have better things to worry about than college football?” We’ll respond by saying that Hatch was the only member of the Senate Judiciary Committee to attend these hearings as the other Senators were busy concocting new ways of ruining the economy via cap and trade and health care reform so we’ll let you reconsider the answer to your own question.
This has all been rendered pretty much moot however as the two hold-out conferences that had not signed the new TV deal with ESPN (a defacto submission to BCS servitude), the WAC and the conference that Utah belongs to, the Mountain West, inked the deal that will have the Network broadcasting the BCS games through the 2014 season.
This came despite strong objections to the BCS power structure by the Mountain West who developed an 8-team playoff format earlier this spring that was, as expected, ignored by the BCS.
The roll-over by the two conferences was best summed up by Boise St. president, Bob Kustra.
"We have no choice," Boise State president Bob Kustra said after the WAC presidents voted unanimously to sign the deal. "The repercussions were just too dramatic and too costly."
How about “complete irrelevance” as well. That’s the power that the BCS now wields.
The BCS-haters (including ourselves) can bitch and moan all they want about the unfairness and overall lameness of the system but when Masada is girded for battle and its defenders, instead, conscript with the Roman army, there is not any more room for righteous indignation.
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2 comments:
"...to address the possibility that the BCS violates federal anti-trust laws."
Is there any real doubt about this? Hell, even plausable deniability?
Murderer's are put on Death Row with far less evidence.
Every year, half of America's college football teams are denied equal access to bowls and championships before foot is ever put to ball to kick off the season.
Outright denied.
As in: You can't eat inside at this table, boy. Go around to the back door and we'll fetch y'all something from the kitchen.
For you NFL heathens, it's like saying that the NFC East, AFC West, and NFC West champions can go ahead and play their season, claim their division championships, but need not make Super Bowl reservations even if they win the NFC or AFC championship game -- because those two spots are already reserved for those with "Most Favored Team" status.
Matters not if you're favorite non-BCS team is quite capable of boxing in the ears of the other team by, say, a couple of TD's on the SuperDome floor -- Just as they are capable, and repeatedly have, over the last couple of seasons upset (see UNLV-ASU, Wyoming-Tennessee, among many many examples) or whooped ass (see Utah-UCLA)...
... on any given Saturday.
BCS as Jim Crow.
Now, that's a little more like it.
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