Thompson should be applauded for his battle against BCS

The Mountain West's rebel stand to change the BCS hasn't progressed without fallout from the elite who sit upon the college football money throne.

Under orders from MWC school presidents to push the envelope, commissioner Craig Thompson's proposal for changes in the BCS — which were rejected — and his aim to draw focus on the controversy, have ticked off a few people, namely folks from the automatic qualifying conferences.

Thompson has griped, the big boys winced.

They don't like the dissent. When the media keeps harping on the BCS, the majority of Americans don't like the system and the president even weighs in, sensitive feelings are trampled.

The Big 12 Conference Commissioner Dan Beebe is the latest to criticize the MWC for failure to smile while doing the BCS lockstep march.

"I was very disturbed about any of our conferences that are a part of the BCS coming out after we negotiated with television and then proposing drastic changes to the system," Beebe told a reporter for The Dallas Morning News.

"I went to my board last December with the ESPN contract and got approval to sign it. Afterward, the Mountain West makes these proposals and acts like we're holding a gun to their head on the television contract."

Beebe's right, it wasn't a gun; it was a howitzer.

Beebe also didn't appreciate the mean remarks from Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas.

Remember Barton? He was the politician who compared the BCS to communism when the MWC pushed the issue its to Capitol Hill in May and made this inflammatory link at a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection Subcommittee.

Cried Beebe: "My memory of when I studied history and Karl Marx was that a major tenet of communism involved taking from each according to their ability and giving to each according to their need.

"It's ironic we're being labeled as communists when what was actually being asked of us was to be more communistic, taking from those of us who produce more in the marketplace and giving to those who don't produce in the marketplace."