Congressional hearing puts BCS officials on defensive

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, told big colleges and football bowl executives that their sworn testimony before Congress on Friday finally and truthfully made clear why they oppose a playoff system, and why teams like the undefeated University of Utah were excluded from last year's Bowl Championship Series championship game.

"It's about money," he said. "It's not about athleticism on the field."

Then he gave the BCS some advise: "You should either change your name to BES, for Bowl Exhibition System, or just drop the 'C' and call it the BS system. It's not about determining the championship on the field."

Barton is sponsoring a bill that would prohibit calling any game a football national championship if it is not determined by a playoff system. "It's about truth in advertising," he said. About the current BCS, he said it is a bit "like communism. You can't fix it…. Sooner or later, you're going to have to try a new model."

Bobby Rush, D-Ill., chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection, seconded the assertion and said, "It seems to me we have a championship series that is not really a championship series. It is a misnomer."

In the hearing, officials from the Mountain West Conference — which includes Utah and Brigham Young University — and other non-BCS conferences outlined why they feel the current system is unfair. And BCS officials defended it, and said a playoff would kill off many smaller bowls and bar many colleges from playing in any postseason games.

Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson said the BCS excludes nearly half of all teams from a potential championship before the season begins — because they are not in conferences that receive automatic BCS berths — and pointed to what happened last season to the University of Utah as an example.

He noted Utah was undefeated in the regular season, but not chosen for the championship game that instead pitted two teams with one loss. "Utah was eliminated this past season not by a team, but by the BCS." He added that the 51 teams in non-BCS conferences "are, in effect, done before day one. A system that produces this effect is patently unfair."

Barton agreed, saying, "I don't think that's a debatable proposition." He asked BCS coordinator John Swofford, who is also commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference, "How do you answer that, that before the first game is played half of the football teams in the country … don't have a prayer to win the national football championship."