Shurtleff considers probe of the BCS

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff was among the fans at the Sugar Bowl, cheering wildly as the Utes defeated the Alabama Crimson Tide.

Now, fuming over their apparent denial of a national championship after an undefeated season, he's considering launching an investigation into college football's Bowl Championship Series. Shurtleff plans to meet with some of his lawyers and investigators next week to consider building an antitrust case against the BCS.

"This game proved that it's an unfair system," the attorney general said in an interview with the Deseret News on Monday. "A team like Utah will never be given a chance."

BCS administrator Bill Hancock said it would be inappropriate to comment on something organization officials have yet to see. "I would say the system we have for postseason football is the one that was agreed upon by all 11 conferences," he said.

To make an antitrust case, Shurtleff has to argue a conspiracy that, in effect, creates a monopoly. In the BCS system, he suggested that with thousands of athletes and millions of dollars at stake, the BCS schools get more money, better stadiums and better recruits. Add to it the ranking and voting system for which teams get into a BCS bowl game, it removes schools like Utah.

"How do you substitute greed and money for heart and guts?" Shurtleff said.

The BCS is made up of the various college football conferences and the University of Notre Dame. Any legal action taken against the BCS may have to include all of those schools.

"Under the BCS, the access for all 119 teams is greater than it was before," Hancock said Monday.

The University of Oklahoma Sooners (12-1) and University of Florida Gators (12-1) play for the BCS championship on Thursday in Miami.

Shurtleff raised questions about BCS antitrust practices when Utah went to the Fiesta Bowl in 2004 but dropped it when Congress began looking into it.

"The BCS said, 'Let us fix it,"' he said.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, held hearings on the BCS in 2003 as chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, accusing the entity of bias against non-BCS teams. Following the U.'s Sugar Bowl win last week, Hatch repeated his criticisms.

"Regardless of what happens in the Florida-Oklahoma game, the outcome will not change the fact that there is only one undefeated team in Division I college football: the University of Utah," Hatch said. "For the second time in four years, the BCS-busting Utes have gone undefeated and yet uninvited to play for a national championship. That needs to change because the system is broken. The BCS is fatally flawed and, until it is fixed, will continue to produce a flawed college football champion."