As certain as complaints about how businesses observe the season arise each December so do complaints about how NCAA Division I college football determines its national champion. While just which team is declared a national champion would seem to be a matter of no great importance to most of us, Congress just can’t resist getting involved — or at least trying to.
While it already has been determined that the University of Alabama and the University of Texas will meet in the Bowl Championship Series national title game, a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee has approved by a voice vote a bill by Rep. Joe Barton of Texas that seeks to force a playoff system to determine the national champion among big-time college football teams.
This is a big deal. President Barack Obama has said he favors a playoff. So does Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, whose home state university was kept out of last year’s national championship game by the current system. Hatch has called for a federal antitrust investigation.
The Bowl Championship Series has hired President George Bush’s former spokesman, Ari Fleischer, to see that a playoff and the antitrust probe don’t happen.
With the University of Texas in the championship game, one would think Barton would not be leading the drive for a playoff system. But Barton represents the part of Texas that includes TCU, which along with Cincinnati and Boise State, is one of three undefeated teams that think it deserves a shot at a national title. If there were a playoff system in Division I like there is in every other NCAA football division, the national championship would be determined in the field like it should.
Barton’s bill would ban a bowl from billing itself as a national championship unless the chosen teams had been produced by a playoff system. Anything else, Barton’s bill says, is “unfair and deceptive.”
Congress assumes this authority under the interstate commerce clause, Barton says . His bill would make it illegal for anyone to “promote, market or advertise” a non-playoff national title or to sell merchandise proclaiming such.
Barton’s bill is given no chance of becoming law. The reason is money not fairness. The multitude of post-season bowl games create an estimate $1.2 billion in revenue for the NCAA, but most bowl games would disappear under a playoff system.
If we had our druthers, we would much prefer a playoff system to determine the best college football team in the country. That being said, Congress has more than enough on its plate — two wars, a sagging economy, health care reform, etc. — to interfere with the immense cash cow major college football has with its bowl games.
