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Dr. Saturday

Mon Jul 06, 2009 2:26 pm EDT

The BCS has had just about enough of your cheek, whippersnappers

By Holly Anderson

If it's not abundantly clear by now, we are getting what you might call Sick To Death of the Congressional battle for the BCS, the latest iteration of which will apparently involve the invocation of the freaking Antitrust Act. (We do have to hand it to Orrin Hatch for sheer audacity, though: Had our team gone undefeated and been shut out of the title game we'd be raising all the hell we could manage too. It's just that his powers of squalling have considerably greater reach than our own.) As tiresome as this is all becoming, however, it would be drearier still if it were a one-sided fight, and to that end, we direct you to Real Clear Sports' interview with John Swofford, ACC commish and current "BCS Coordinator," which is not a very important-sounding title but apparently empowers him to strap on his fighting shoes and defend the cartel in the cattiest possible manner (emphasis added):

The BCS is voluntary. If a conference decided it did not want to be a part of the BCS there is certainly no requirement that it do so. Obviously if certain conferences said they were not going to be a part of it, that could be a factor in its continuation -- depending on which conferences, that is.

While his title is vaguely evocative of someone charged with bringing orange slices to meetings, there's no denying Swofford's got game. That there is some quality rhetorical flamethrowing. You feeling a burning sensation, citizens of the Mountain West? Go on, says John Swofford! We don't need you! We don't need anybody! And by "we", he means himself, the Pac-10, and the Big 10, the only two conferences we'd bet cold cash money would never flee the system thanks to their romantic devotion to the Rose Bowl and its trappings. Swofford's even confident enough to cop to the added financial gains that might ensue from implementing a playoff, with the air of a man utterly without fear. After all, what are piles of free money next to tissue paper roses and pretty girls on parade floats and yet another puzzlingly pedestrian throttling of a relatively hapless heartland opponent at the hands of USC?

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22 Comments

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  1. Tom
    1. Posted by Tom Mon Jul 06, 2009 4:24 pm EDT

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    Hatch graduated from BYU, which makes this all the more surprising.
  2. bballplyr252004
    2. Posted by bballplyr252004 Mon Jul 06, 2009 4:36 pm EDT

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    if utah is so great, then why doesn't it join a BCS league and see if they will go undefeated
  3. BDota
    3. Posted by BDota Mon Jul 06, 2009 5:10 pm EDT

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    To that I would point out that Oklahoma and Florida didn't go undefeated in a BCS conference.
  4. morgois
    4. Posted by morgois Mon Jul 06, 2009 5:32 pm EDT

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    bballplyr252004 which AQ conference will let Utah join?
  5. Phil M
    5. Posted by Phil M Mon Jul 06, 2009 5:41 pm EDT

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    IT was better before the BCS...it just was.
  6. CuseFanInSoCal
    6. Posted by CuseFanInSoCal Mon Jul 06, 2009 7:49 pm EDT

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    It's likely the Pac 10, Big Ten, and Rose Bowl would bail on the BCS together in a hearbeat if they thought they could ditch the negative publicity for doing it. Tradition and the Rose Bowl mean everything to those guys.
  7. gtne91
    7. Posted by gtne91 Mon Jul 06, 2009 7:53 pm EDT

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    I love the "why doesnt Utah join a BCS conference then" argument. Some people really have no clue how things work. Utah would kill (maybe even literally) to get in a BCS conference. BYU was supposed to be in the Big12 before Ann Richards forced them to take Baylor. It isnt like BYU/Utah has turned an offer down. Notre Dame is the only school that has said no to a conference in the BCS era.
  8. Justin B
    8. Posted by Justin B Mon Jul 06, 2009 8:24 pm EDT

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    More important... why doesn't the BCS just add every conference and be done with it? If it's so voluntary, why are whole conferences denied access? That would end any b!tching in a heartbeat.
    Notre Dame can be in the BCS and be independent because they think they're bigger than college football. They won't join a conference because they'd have to share TV revenue- and that isn't the ND way. Off beat a bit, I think it'd be funny if all the conferences were let in, but ND was forced out until they joined a conference (the Big East, since all their other sports are played in it).
  9. bobby
    9. Posted by bobby Mon Jul 06, 2009 8:42 pm EDT

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    gtne the point is utah has done nothing to get a big six conferance to consider them joining and they would be a great fit in the pac 10. utah this spring has admitted that to afford to cont to play football they are going to have to schedule tougher out of conf. games because the cupcakes they have been lining up does not get the bills paid. 11-0 against cupcakes does not impress me or anyone else that follows football. one bowl game a year does not make you a power house!!!! and while you complain about the bcs if it was not for the bcs you would not have gotten to play in that bowl either look back in history and tell us what bowl contracts you had pre bcs would that be NONE lol just like a little child give you a taste of the pie and now you want it all without the work that goes into earning it
  10. gtne91
    10. Posted by gtne91 Mon Jul 06, 2009 9:04 pm EDT

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    robert d,
    Read my name again. My school played plenty of great bowls pre-BCS. Starting with beating Cal in the 1928 Rose. I care about Utah none at all, other than as an abstract concept. The argument made in #2 is just plain stupid and that I cant stand.
  11. BDota
    11. Posted by BDota Mon Jul 06, 2009 9:06 pm EDT

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    I'll assume you meant 12-0, as there are 12 games in the regular season.
    Three of their regular season wins games came against teams that finished in the top 25 of the AP Poll, #7 TCU, #18 Oregon State, and #25 BYU.
    Compare that to Florida who went 11-1 in the regular season. The teams they beat in the regular season the finished in the AP Poll were #13 Georgia and #21 Florida State.
    Florida might have played an overall harder schedules, but to say that Utah feasted on cupcakes is ridiculous.
  12. bobby
    12. Posted by bobby Mon Jul 06, 2009 10:26 pm EDT

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    1928 rose bowl lol now that is what i would call a loyal fan
  13. bobby
    13. Posted by bobby Mon Jul 06, 2009 10:33 pm EDT

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    bucky oregon state and byu are cupcakes when compaired to georgia, fsu, miami, lsu, penn state, usc, ohio state, texas, ok, ok state, fl ect
  14. ChrisB
    14. Posted by ChrisB Tue Jul 07, 2009 2:10 am EDT

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    I don't think it has hit the BCS that there are new sheriffs at the FTC and DOJ, and a more regulatory friendly filibuster proof majority of democrats, most of whom aren't from SEC and ACC country. Swofford is confident because his lawyers constructed a nice contraption based on the antitrust regime of 5-10 years ago. Well, sometimes the ground shifts, and sometimes someone who starts cockily thumbing his nose at Congress finds himself suffering through an earthquake.
  15. cpt_ha
    15. Posted by cpt_ha Tue Jul 07, 2009 3:53 am EDT

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    I have a question: Why does the BCS think itself so benevolent towards non-AQs? For non-AQs the choice is between death and servitude. That is counter-argument towards the "voluntary" pitch the BCS is giving, that the current arrangement is more an agreement made at gunpoint.
  16. bobby
    16. Posted by bobby Tue Jul 07, 2009 6:45 am EDT

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    the only thing worse then a politician getting envolved with any private interest is people listening to them and thinking it will improve the situation. mr hatch is just running his mouth to get votes and these people that think a playoff is better then what we have now never offer any better way of picking who gets to play and who does not. an 8 team playoff is 7 games over three weeks but how do you decide which 8 teams and what about all those other teams that were going to play in a bowl that is no longer played and the income for all those small schools that need that bowl money to pay for their team. grandma said you never throw the baby with the bath water. i agree that the bcs can be improved however to scrap the whole system with nothing better to take its place is fool hearty at best and borders on blind stupidity with a failure to look down the road and at the problems a limited playoff presents. what gets to me the most is the teams that scream the loudest are the ones that never got to play in the major bowls before the bcs all the bowls pre bcs were commited to the champions of differant conf big 10 played pac 10 sec played what is now the big 12 acc played sec ect.. mountain west was let in the door by the bcs and now they want to kill it
  17. Ute in DC
    17. Posted by Ute in DC Tue Jul 07, 2009 9:48 am EDT

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    @ robert d
    Playing Georgia, FSU, Miami, LSu, Penn State, USC, Ohio State, Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Florida does sound like a tough schedule. That sounds down right brutal. Who played that schedule?l
  18. ken h
    18. Posted by ken h Tue Jul 07, 2009 2:50 pm EDT

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    Robert D, coming from a Pac 10 fan, you're an idiot. You have no idea what you're talking about so do yourself a favor and stop posting.
  19. the_ink_tattooz_1
    19. Posted by the_ink_tattooz_1 Tue Jul 07, 2009 7:22 pm EDT

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    hey everyone looks at utah and say play better schools. And thats cool but what about the usc's out there who take harder teams off there scheduling because it messes up there title hopes fsu-usc use to be the labor day kick off classic until pete carroll realized he couldnt win so they replaced usc with miami . florida took miami off its scheduling and behold came back with the citadel and so forth and so forth so why is utah penalized for there lack of competition when big name schools are dodging competition. and yes pete carroll had the oppurtunity to continue playing fsu but declined that open invitation. man take the 6 bcs schools take the 2 at large bids make a play off and end the arguements of the utahs and boise states...........!!!!!!!!!! or we just might have an appalachian state michigan upset on our hands
  20. bobby
    20. Posted by bobby Tue Jul 07, 2009 8:07 pm EDT

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    last year there were 34 post season games that is 68 teams that got to play post season i would not want to be the one to tell the 60 teams you want to eliminate they can not play now. as for play better team chant the mountain west conf contains air force, utah, wyoming, tcu, byu, colorado state, new mexico, san diego st. and unlv, while this list contains three good to great teams it leaves an overall weak schedule what byu utah and tcu need is more nat exposure against teams that fans know respect and see on a regular basis not to say the mountain west is not everybit as tough as the big east but at this point i think everyone can question if the big east should be one big six either
  21. hr209
    21. Posted by hr209 Sun Jul 12, 2009 5:17 pm EDT

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    As I said last week, robert d, I think the general answer to your complaint is that we should keep the majority of the bowl games; just add playoff games to the slate. Add two more games to the BCS bowls to bring them up to the required seven games for an eight-team playoff, and play most (if not all) of the other ~30 bowls. Or have another tournament similar to the NIT. Or stop taking every team with a middling .500 record to a bowl game by eliminating some of the postseason games. There are lots of options that don't involve eliminating 60 teams from the offseason, and even if some wouldn't make it under the new rules, at least it would make "playing in a bowl game" more meaningful than it is now.
    Furthermore, requiring "nat exposure against teams that fans know respect and see on a regular basis" is exactly what got us into this problem in the first place. If I recall correctly, one of the BCS's original goals was to select the two best teams in the country and remove as much bias out of the equation as possible. (Cue computer rankings.) Around the time of the 2003 debacle, they realized that people would rather see the teams that they THINK are the best in the country, which is why the current formula is 2/3 polls. However, the main sticking point for me (and many others) is that there's a really easy way to settle the argument... Play the game. Don't think Utah is good enough to be national champ? Fine... Have them play Alabama, Texas, and Florida and let's find out.
  22. Lizardgrad89
    22. Posted by Lizardgrad89 Wed Jul 15, 2009 12:51 pm EDT

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    Orrin Hatch is an idiot. Anti-trust legislation is there to bust up monopolies. There is no such thing as a non-profit monopoly. The BCS isn't Microsoft, it's a coalition of non-profit bowls and conferences designed to channel funding to other non-profits, namely Universities.
    Hopefully, Orrin will shut up as soon as he feels he has pulled enough votes out of the issue.
    I would find it very interesting if Congress forced the end of the BCS, despite the fact there is no law or precedent for such an action. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if the big 6 conferences left the NCAA and formed a new organization. But if that happened, not only would it kill the rent-a-win system (no more playing a big school for a big payday to balance the budget), but it would kill march Madness as well for those schools that stayed in the NCAA.
    All those little schools have been riding the coattails of the big schools for decades, taking a cut of the basketball tourney money, even though nobody is tuning in to watch them play, playing the big schools in football for a big payday, and generally balancing the athletic budget on the back of the big schools.
    Well, no more of that.
    Frankly, I believe that, if the small schools lose the big schools, a big chunk of them won't be able to afford intercollegiate athletics at all any more, and will shut down their programs and just have intermurals.
    All I'm saying to the mid-majors is don't wish on the monkey's paw.

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