Hatch's Senate panel to discuss BCS

WASHINGTON — Some senators openly worried about an emerging threat that could change America. They squirmed a bit as Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch announced Thursday he will hold a hearing next week on it.

What is so dire, that some were even heard to say it is akin to a "WMD," or weapon of mass destruction?

"The University of Utah," joked Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.

More specifically, the University of Utah's much-improved football team. With a 5-1 record and a Top 25 ranking, it and a few other schools in less-prestigious conferences are raising questions about why they are virtually excluded from a shot at the national championship by the way the Bowl Championship Series is designed.

"The University of Utah is an emerging threat to the traditional gridiron powers," Sessions said to laughter as Hatch, R-Utah, announced the upcoming hearing.

"We're getting down to serious issues now," Sessions joked, after committee members in recent days handled hearings on terrorism, bitterly controversial judicial nominations and controversial legislation on "partial-birth" abortion.

"It is serious," Hatch said about problems with the BCS.

Hatch — who attended Brigham Young University, the U.'s archrival — did not comment on how much of a threat the U. is to the current system. Hatch actually started attacking the BCS years ago when BYU (suffering a bad year now) was then a Top 10 team but not invited to any major, big-money bowls.

Not surprisingly, chief among the witnesses whom Hatch has invited to testify next Wednesday is former BYU football coach LaVell Edwards. He is expected to oppose the BCS system, as is Tulane University President Scott W. Cowen.

Among witnesses expected to defend or explain the system are Myles Brand, president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association; Keith Tribble, chief executive officer of the Orange Bowl Committee; and Harvey Perlman, chancellor of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

The BCS was formed five years ago by six elite conferences — the Southeastern, Big 12, Big East, Pacific-10, Big Ten and Atlantic Coast — to help arrange a national championship game between the top two ranked Division I-A schools each year. That game is rotated among the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar and Orange bowls.

In the system, six of the eight available slots in those four BCS bowls each year go to champions of the six BCS conferences. The two remaining slots may go to other BCS schools, or to an outside school if they are ranked in the top six nationally in the BCS system that combines several polls and rankings of schedule strength.

However, no outside school has yet been chosen for any BCS bowl in the alliance's five-year existence.