DECEMBER 7, 2009.Football Bowls Take Spotlight
By JOHN D. MCKINNON and DARREN EVERSON
Lawmakers, between grappling with wars and economic woes, are carving out time this week to address another hot issue this time of year: whether to try to force a national college-football playoff.
It might not be the weightiest controversy facing the nation. But with the year-end bowl season about to begin, the subject is likely to grab the attention of many Americans, especially fans of nontraditional football powers who complain that their teams are sometimes overlooked under the current championship system. (Please see related article on page.)
Associated Press Quarterback Colt McCoy after Texas' victory against Nebraska Saturday. Undefeated Texas will go on to the national championship.
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For the past decade or so, the process of picking a national champion has been run by the Bowl Championship Series, a group that began with six major college conferences and has since expanded. The BCS runs a ranking system that picks the two teams that play for the national championship each year.
This year, two perennial powerhouses, the University of Alabama and the University of Texas, ranked Nos. 1 and 2, will compete for the title on Jan. 7 in Pasadena, Calif. Schools such as Texas Christian University and the University of Cincinnati -- which, like Texas and Alabama, are undefeated and rank high in the polls -- will be watching from the sidelines.
An oft-pitched alternative to the BCS is a playoff system. "Unless you broaden the base and let the teams in the last game win their way there, you are never going to have a true national champion," Rep. Joe Barton (R., Texas), who is sponsoring legislation aimed at forcing a playoff, said in an interview Sunday.
Mr. Barton -- whose district includes part of Fort Worth, where TCU is located -- predicted that "slowly and surely change is coming," due in part to growing congressional pressure.
Cincinnati athletic director Mike Thomas said Sunday that he is "disappointed" his team won't be going to the title game, and favors "some form" of playoff. "But I don't think anyone has come up with a perfect system yet, otherwise we'd already be using it," he said.
BCS Executive Director Bill Hancock said in a statement Sunday: "Unlike playoff advocates who have no consensus about what type of playoff to construct, the BCS has achieved a consensus among 120 institutions of higher education."
"With everything going in the country right now, doesn't Congress have more important things to do?" he asked.
Some lawmakers acknowledge they enjoy dealing with this issue. "Our Energy and Commerce Committee has been spending weeks, and actually months now, working on carbon sequestration and health care, and this is much more fun to talk about," Rep. Gene Green (D., Texas) said at a hearing on college football earlier this year.
The issue has drawn the attention of President Barack Obama, who said late last year that "we should be creating a playoff system" for college football.
The House Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection subcommittee is expected to vote this week on Mr. Barton's bill, which would effectively force a national playoff system by 2012. It would do so by making it an "unfair or deceptive" trade practice for anyone to market or promote a "national championship game" unless the game is "the final game of a single elimination post-season playoff system."
Prior to the BCS's involvement, the national champion was effectively chosen by polls following year-end bowl games. The BCS was designed to eliminate some of the controversy that swirled around that process by adding a computer component, removing some of the reliance on polls of humans.
Congressional critics charge that the BCS formula for choosing the top two teams is influenced by human voters, who tend to favor the traditional powerhouse teams -- making it unfair to other schools and all but shutting them out of the title game. Mr. Barton and other critics also say that in distributing its sizable revenue, the BCS reserves outsize shares for the six original conferences and the independent University of Notre Dame.
"Our nation has weightier issues to tackle, but this issue merits some attention because college football is a billion-dollar enterprise that affects schools' funding for athletic programs, scholarships and capital projects," said Matt Sanderson, one of the founders of Playoff PAC, a group pushing for a new selection system. "That's important in this economy."
"Fairness a lot of times is from where you sit," BCS representative John Swofford, commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference, said at a congressional hearing on the BCS in May. "But I think [the current system] is fair, because it represents the marketplace."
BCS officials and their allies argue that any move to a playoff system could adversely affect the numerous post-season bowl games. Even a four-team playoff would inevitably be expanded, they say, potentially leading to poor attendance, a shift of post-season games to campus locations from neutral sites, the death of the bowls and lost jobs.
Write to John D. McKinnon at john.mckinnon@wsj.com and Darren Everson at darren.everson@wsj.com
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A6
