Governmental Fairness in the BCS

Here it comes. We are about to offer an extremely patronizing note to defenders of college football’s sympathetic and heralded little guys like Utah and Boise State: Be damned careful what you wish for! You don’t want a motivated championship-level team from a BCS conference slapping you around. People could get hurt. Ask Hawaii about the fun it had in the 2008 Sugar Bowl when fired-up Georgia came to play.
For those readers only one paragraph into this blog and already frothing at the mouth, we offer two words: Chill out! We know all about Boise’s thrilling BCS bowl upset of Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl and Utah’s fast start in last January’s Sugar Bowl toward a big BCS win over Alabama. More on that nonsense later.
The Senior Senator from Utah
In early July, the U.S. Senate became the second body of Congress to take up debate over the dreaded bias of college football’s Bowl Championship Series. From the Presidential Bully Pulpit, Barack Obama had on at least two occasions proposed a playoff system for college football. Oh, really?
Interestingly, the leader of the anti-BCS movement in the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee—mostly with the indifferent absence of his fellow committee members—cropped up from the other political party. The BCS muckraker turned out to be the senior Republican in the Senate, Orrin Hatch of Utah.
Prior to the hearings, Hatch authored a pointed piece in the Scorecard section of the July 6 issue of Sports Illustrated. In it, Hatch railed on about the BCS’s “biased nature,” that the case for “government involvement is compelling.” He went on: “…six conferences, which include slightly more than half of the teams in Division 1-A, receive automatic bids to play in the five most prestigious and lucrative bowl games—even if teams from other conferences have had better seasons.” Hatch revealed a lot when he conveniently brought up the school in his own home state, the University of Utah, as prime example of a football team that “had plenty of big wins, (but) the BCS system denied them the chance to play for the national championship.” When tallying BCS bowl income, “the numbers are staggering.” “(But) the disbursement scheme places teams from these smaller conferences at a disadvantage when it comes to hiring staff and improving facilities.” He went on: “there is no denying college football is a business.” And also: “If the government were to ignore a similar business arrangement of this magnitude in any other industry, it would be condemned for shirking its responsibility.”
What the Senator left out was that no BCS rule exists that would prevent a Utah or Boise State from the championship game, so long as that team finishes in the top 2 of the final BCS standing in early December. So, take up your case with the voters in the USA TODAY Coaches Poll and with the computers. The only way to influence the computers is to win against a tough schedule. Look into history and you’ll find both Penn State and Florida State, once considered football weaklings, scheduled their way into national championship opportunities.
Disassembly of the Argument
Pardon us while we disassemble the Senator’s argument. The vast income generated by the BCS Bowls exists simply because American football fans care so much about the giants, not the Cinderellas, of the college game. For longer than anyone alive today—including the venerable Sen. Hatch—teams like Alabama, Clemson, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Miami (Florida), Michigan, Nebraska, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Penn State, Southern California, Tennessee, and Texas and many more have fueled interest in football so that teams like Utah and Boise State could join the fun and actually turn a profit on their pigskin endeavors. Roll back the clock 40 years: Ohio State averaged 86,235 fans per home game, and Utah attracted and average of 23,107; Alabama averaged 60,733, while college-division teams like Boise State didn’t even report figures because the Broncos were playing the likes of Central Washington, Whitworth, Hiram-Scott, and Colorado Western.
Perhaps the large number of Democrats roaming the halls of Congress these days has swayed Sen. Hatch’s thinking. The pioneers of exploration and innovation made America great and permitted it to be great for every “me-too” to follow in their footsteps. There is plenty of room for “me-too” lesser lights, but the pioneers of football earned the right to be paid for their greatness, not have the playing field leveled against them.
Ultimately, Hatch’s antitrust maneuvering turns up as terribly transparent. Alabama and Notre Dame fans don’t vote him into office, Utah fans do. So, fair-minded Sen. Hatch, where was your indignation when undefeated Tulane was barred from BCS bowls all together in 1998?
(As an aside, there was plenty of indignation about Tulane back in ’98, especially from the president of the university. The cries grew loud that BCS exclusion prevented a fair chance for the Green Wave. The truth is Tulane had plenty of chances, but blew them as a frequently-inept member from 1933 to 1966 of the Southeastern Conference, a mighty backbone of today’s BCS monopoly.)
If the “little guys” are shut out “even if they had better seasons,” how is it better if most of the victories come over puny foes? Please examine Boise State’s 2008 schedule and compare it to, let’s say, Auburn’s slate. Boise enjoyed a 12-1 mark last season, the only loss coming by a single point in the Poinsettia Bowl against fellow-mighty-little-guy Texas Christian. Boise had a very nice win—the school’s first-ever road victory over a BCS conference team—when it beat injury-riddled Oregon early in the season. Otherwise, the powerhouses that fell to the Broncos included Idaho State, Louisiana Tech, San Jose State, New Mexico State, Idaho, and Fresno State. My, my, wouldn’t Auburn, a miserable failure in 2008 at 5-7, have longed to replace LSU, Tennessee, Arkansas, West Virginia, Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama with Boise’s list of also-rans? The Tigers might have gone 12-0 and hardly been scored upon. Fired-for-failure coach Tommy Tuberville still would be a hero.
Colleges Are Businesses?
And since when, Sen. Hatch, are colleges to be considered businesses under the microscope of antitrust regulation? Last we looked, colleges were supposed to be non-profit enterprises with a goal of excellent education. Along with dispensing knowledge, college communities also offer an array of out-of-classroom activity, including athletics. Major football programs must to be run like businesses, as you say, in part because of the last act of fairness that government forced upon college sports. Every college athletic program is burdened today by a long list of silly women’s sports required by Title IX legislation. That is not to say there aren’t silly men’s sports too. It’s just that Title IX has forced upon the world far more phony women’s sports than men’s, all draining bushels of dollars from athletic budgets that must be refilled by profitable football and basketball. The only people who care about women’s badminton are the badminton athletes themselves (many of whom are on athletic scholarship by the way), and their coaches and parents.
Speaking of stupid politics hurting college sports, how about the case of Texas Christian? TCU was a long-time, up-and-down member of the Southwest Conference that fell on hard football times in the latter days of the league. When the Big 8 and SWC were melded to form the Big 12 (another gem of today’s BCS) in 1996, TCU was just beginning to regain its football footing. But instead of being included in the new mega-conference, TCU was shunned in favor of Baylor. The Baylor Bears weren’t any more attractive to the Big 12 than the TCU Horned Frogs, but the Governor of Texas at the time, Democrat Anne Richards, was a Baylor graduate. She used political clout to secure a spot in the Big 12 South for her Bears, who have rarely poked their noses out of the division cellar in all the years since. TCU, meanwhile, was forced into a little-guy schedule in middling conferences and not surprisingly posted a very solid record in this decade of 83-28 against mostly weak foes.
Nearly every year, the little guys offer up an undefeated team to argue for a spot in the BCS title game. As predictable as sunrise, supporters of non-BCS conferences gripe continually about lack of fairness. They point vigorously at the BCS bowl wins earned by Boise State over Oklahoma and Utah over Alabama. However exciting (especially Boise’s win), both are tainted victories, as the little guys faced highly unmotivated major teams. The failed cases of Oklahoma in 2006 and Alabama last year are similar, so in the interest of saving space, let’s discuss Alabama of 2008.
The Crimson Tide spent much of the second half of the season ranked at no. 1 because they surprisingly roared undefeated through a difficult schedule that included eight tough foes from the SEC, the best league of them all, and pre-season no. 9 Clemson. To make the BCS title game, the top-ranked Tide had only to beat fast-closing and determined Florida in the SEC championship game. Alabama led early, rallied to take a fourth-quarter lead, but lost in the closing moments to a tremendous effort led by Gators quarterback Tim Tebow, who many believe is the best college player ever to buckle a chinstrap.
Tremendous Letdown
Is it any wonder that facing Utah in the Sugar Bowl was a tremendous letdown for Alabama, which also lost offensive tackle Andre Smith, its best player, to suspension? Consider for a moment a concocted but equivalent NFL situation. The New York Giants, playing as defending Super Bowl champions, spent a good deal of the 2008 season as (debatably) the best and most physical team in the NFL. But as the regular season drew toward the end, the Giants lost their fastest and best field-stretching receiving threat, Plaxico Burress, to a gun-shot wound and eventual criminal proceedings. Injuries to both offensive and defensive lines also robbed the Giants of some of their toughness. So, it wasn’t altogether stunning when they lost a bitter playoff game to the rival Philadelphia Eagles. If this had been college football, the crestfallen Giants would have been told they were headed to the Sugar Bowl to play little-guy Utah. Is it tough to get up for that game? You think!?! Perhaps Utah even could have beaten the professional New York Giants in a Sugar Bowl game the pros (and Alabama) thought superfluous.
Lastly, if fairness is to be forced upon a group of superior college football teams that essentially infused all the greatness into the sport, let’s fabricate one more situation any football fan would find ludicrous. What if the Arena Football League was to flicker back to life, and the Philadelphia Soul were to go undefeated the next year? Should the Soul be allowed to play the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFL playoffs because they “had a better season” than the (let’s say 12-4) Eagles? Please!
The NFL is a closed society of the very best in football. The top pro league has earned the right to choose which of its members are permitted to play for the annual championship. The schools from BCS conferences have earned the same right, but nearly every year the BCS coalition still graciously permits one Utah or Boise State or Hawaii into the bowl party even if the schedule those schools have clobbered is truly third-rate. That is plenty fair.

by Bob Boyles