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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