The Sports Corner

Congress to investigate BCS, potential for playoff

The Bowl Championship Series has seen its fair share of detractors. But none have been as powerful as the Senate Judiciary’s subcommittee on antitrust, competition policy and consumer rights, who have decided to make the BCS a priority on Capital Hill.

Congress has far more pressing problems to look into than a system which determines a champion in collegiate sports. Stay out of the BCS. It’s not your problem. 

Politicians should be spending more time on: The AIG bailout, TARP, overseas wars and Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

Here’s a quick list of what not to do when your country is on a path to self destruction:

1. Question baseball stars on their “illegal” steroid use.

2. Have your President parade around on national television networks.

3. a) Pour money into the institutions that failed the country in the first place.

3. b) Allow those institutions to pay out millions in bonuses to employees that were the main perpetrators of said failure.

4. Have the Republican party resort to infighting for leadership instead of presenting themselves as a strong opposition. 

5. Investigate the system by which college football crowns a champion.

The BCS isn’t perfect but it’s a far better system than what was previously in place. A playoff that is as inclusive as some are calling for would destroy the value of the regular season altogether. 

That can’t be stressed enough. College football has the best regular season in all of sports. That’s what determines the champion, not an eight-team, 16-team or 32-team playoff, where any team can win a few games and be named “national champion.”

If you can’t understand that, then you don’t watch enough of the sport. For god’s sake, turn the television on during a Saturday afternoon in the Fall! Watching highlights doesn’t do the sport justice.

As for a playoff, the only “playoff” that could possibly help the game is a plus-one format where the teams are re-ranked after the bowl games are played and the top two teams then play for the national title. That retains most of the power the regular season holds today.

But pushing the season’s end any later than it already is threatens the academic nature of the sport.

Let’s not forget that many of the athletes playing in these games aren’t going to the NFL, AFL or CFL for that matter. They’re student-athletes and they can’t afford to spend much time away from their studies.

Yes, there are players who don’t attend classes and skim by academically because they’re destined to play on Sundays. Future pro athletes are a very small population of collegiate athletics. 

Here we go again, another BCS vs. Playoff debate. It will not be solved today, nor this season. It cannot be solved by me and it cannot be solved by congress. 

The system needs to be changed, but a full-scale playoff is not the answer. 

Congress, please turn your attention to the more pressing matters of the day.

This is not your battle.