Having solved Social Security, poverty, the War in Iraq, SCHIP, tax reform, Medicare, illegal wiretapping, and other such trivial issues, some lawmakers have latched onto an issue that will, no doubt, positively affect the lives and living conditions of millions of Americans: College Bowl Reform!
Reps. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., and Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, are introducing a resolution rejecting the oft-criticized bowl system as an illegal restriction on trade because only the largest universities compete in most of the major bowl games. The resolution would require Justice’s antitrust division to investigate whether the system violates federal law.
The measure also would put Congress on record as supporting a college football playoff.
“Who elected these NCAA people? Who are they to decide who competes for the championship?” Abercrombie said at a press conference Thursday on Capitol Hill, gripping a souvenir University of Hawaii football.
The more important question is: OMFG, who elected these morons?
(h/t James)
rumpole
It’s actually worse than you let on. According to Carter’s interview in the NPR story this morning, State spoke to him before he went and said nothing about any reservations (they were, to hear Carter tell it, encouraging). After his trip, however, they made it known that they “begged” him not to go.
There had to be a political reason to do this, and I’m not sure what it is.
Zifnab
Every now and again, Congress likes to work on an issue that can actually agree with. Non-binding gum-flapping resolutions about switching from the BCS system to a play-off system don’t get filibustered or parliamentary procedurized to death. And they give both sides of the aisle someone to yell at who isn’t affiliated with an opposing party.
Why Congress thinks it should have a hand in this nonsense makes about as much sense as why they feel they should be regulating video games and rap music. But hey, some of us civil libertarians have been saying that for years now, and the only thing we get back is “blah blah serious business blah blah think of the children blah blah moral values blah blah Clinton/McCain/Lieberman/Brownback in ’12”.
Just consider this the calm before the next round of shit-storms. I think the general consensus on war, welfare, and wiretapping can be summed up with a pair of upraised middle fingers pointed at each other. It’s not like Congress was making any progress on them when they were actively being discussed.
AlphaFactor
Actually, this congressional resolution is not such a bad idea. Granted, collegiate athletics shouldn’t be a #1 priority when the country as we know it is falling to pieces. But we’re talking about potentially billions of dollars in commerce here which might be evading the purview of anti-trust laws.
Generally speaking, ensuring competitive marketplaces is to be commended.
Now… if our dear, brave leaders were to follow their own example a few steps further and do something about, oh, say…
media consolidation or oil conglomerates…
well, that would be something to be proud of.
Billy K
Well, Congress did such a great job fixing baseball’s steroids problem, why not let them tackle the BCS?
jake
Sad to say but after the Christmas is the Bestest Holiday Evar! bollocks, I don’t see this as the most assanine way our House Pests have chosen to waste their time.
rob!
i’m surprised we don’t get more idiot congressmen and senators from Hawaii. i would think everyone’s just so f**king HAPPY to be living in HAWAII that they don’t pay close attention to the boring minutiae of politics.
scott
“We” did. That’s “we” writ large.
Remember, you go into democracy with the voters you have, not the voters you wished you had. Oh wait, the Founding Fathers worked on getting the voters that wished they had but we scrapped that concept along with other quaint anachronisms in the Constitution.
I say this as an elitist librul.
Cyrus
You know that glibertarian argument about how compared to the 1940s, every American citizen is rich, so we don’t even need to worry about poverty? There are a lot of reasons the argument is harmful crap, but there’s still a kernel of truth there. Looking just at standards of living, all but the very poorest Americans really do have it better than most people in the world. As bad as things have got over the past few years, as bad as people say things are likely to get in the near future, things are still good enough that most people can be complacent, short-sighted and frivolous, and it’s been that way for most of living memory. And that’s the environment our Congressmen have been elected in.
James L.
Westmoreland is the guy who didn’t know all the Ten Commandments when he was on Colbert.
Wonder if he even knows who won the bowl games in January?
If these guys are so stupid, how come the Jedi Mind Shit won’t work on them?
* These are the droids we’re looking for… *
I think that is a question that needs our attention.
Zifnab
Shorter GOP: Only smart people vote Democrat
Seriously, how are these people the one’s running the country unless America is genuinely as stupid as its elected officials.
Grand Moff Texan
I guess I should have seen this coming. The smaller schools’ advocates have been using “cartel” rhetoric for well over a year, so it was bound to happen.
Oh, and Ohio State sucking. That will drive a lot of resentment from the fans of competitive teams.
.
Martin
Until they realize the precedent that it sets, rendering the MLB/NFL/MBA/NHL monopolies equally suspect. My guess is Bud Selig is shitting down these guys necks right now.
Dennis - SGMM
No one could have anticipated that both parties’ fervent desire to keep each other from having any sort of legislative triumph before the coming election would reduce Congress to blustering over minutia.
Singularity
First off, priorities, assholes. We are in an illegal war in Iraq, and you’re concerned about whether Idaho has a fair shot at the national championship? Idiots.
Second, by how much would this idiocy extend the college football season? Having played a little ball, I can tell you that 12 games in a season is hard enough on your body. Adding in the requisite six to eight weeks for a playoff tournament would be murderous on some of these kids.
Adam
The funny part to me is where these representative come from:
Hawaii – The University of Hawaii got sent to the Sugar Bowl to get pounded after an undefeated season – somehow they thought that a 13-0 record earned them a championship game berth, no matter how bad their strength of schedule was.
Georgia – The University of Georgia believes (maybe rightfully, maybe not) that they were screwed out of a national championship berth when LSU vaulted over them in the final BCS standings.
Idaho – Boise State University was forced to play in the Fiesta Bowl in 2007, despite compiling an undefeated record (their case was far stronger to get a championship game berth than Hawaii’s was). At least they won their bowl game.
Looks like they’re just trying to please the home folks by acting like this is important to them.
qwerty42
Think of it as a “health and safety” measure. This way, when there is a drunken (or not quite so drunken) argument over which college football team was better, a reference can be made to “who won the bowl” instead of fists, beer bottles, knives, chairs, guns etc. Really, this has been a burning issue – certainly in the sports pages – for years.
Seitz
Let Congress have their own poll. We have an AP poll, a Harris Poll, an ESPN/USA Today poll. They each crown a champion. Let’s let Congress do a poll.
Congress, you now have the authority to name your own mythical national champion. We’ll let the court of public opinion determine how valid it is.
Yeah, and who “elected” these NFL people? And MLB people? And NBA and NHL people? Who the fuck are they to tell me who the champion is, what with their “playoffs” and “series”. Fuck them! Who “elected” the NCAA selection committee? Why do they get to tell me who won the NCAA basketball championship. Whatta buncha assholes!
w vincentz
I suggest that the citizens of these districts send their representatives a violin.
Yes, a “fiddle”.
They might wish to attach a note that says, “Play this as you watch Rome (or the USA), BURN!
Sign it…”the Ghost of Nero”
Fledermaus
Um, I’m not sure you’re going to like the answer to that one, Michael.
Sage
As a college football fan, I do think the bowl system SUCKS. And since it is a monopoly, the US government is the only power that can change it from the outside.
I’d love to see an 8 or 16 team playoff, although I woudn’t want Congressmen determining how teams are selected. Leave that up to the NCAA or a special board like in March Madness.
Sage
As a college football fan, I do think the bowl system SUCKS. And since it is a monopoly, the US government is the only power that can change it from the outside.
I’d love to see an 8 or 16 team playoff, although I woudn’t want Congressmen determining how teams are selected. Leave that up to the NCAA or a special board like in March Madness.
Grace Nearing
This can mean only one thing: Congress finally ran out of post offices to rename.
Zifnab
Um… no. The college football franchise is a monopoly in so far as it is the only franchise that hosts college football. But unlike your utilities companies or your car dealerships or your supermarkets, you really do have the power to just forgo college football entirely (or at least forgo the post-season).
If people honestly can’t stand the BCS system, then they’ll start turning off their TVs come bowl season. Revenue will drop as ratings fall and the sports franchise will be forced to adapt their marketing strategy. But, as it stands, the big colleges like the BCS system and the TV networks like the BCS system and the advertisers like the BCS system, so its not going to change. Market forces.
But seriously, of all the things to cry “monopoly” about? It’s not the only thing on TV, it’s not even the only sport on TV. Love it or leave it or bitch louder. But you don’t need to drag the entire US Congress into the mess as though college football play-offs are in any way their concern. We don’t shell out $100k+ / year for these jack holes to tell athletes, coaches, businesses, and broadcasters how to run a sport.
HL_guy
Oh man, I thought you meant “College Bowl” like, the quiz game, with buzzers, bonus questions etc. Think about what that says about Congress, that one could seriously entertain the thought that they wanted to propose legislation related to College Bowl, even for just a nanosecond until clarity returned.
Martin
That’s not what monopoly power is about. Consumer choice affects how we approach the problem as we are more tolerant of some monopolies than others. But monopoly power has always been about the ability of one organization to control entry to a market. It has nothing to do with consumers, really.
Look at pro sports. Salaries are off the charts because there is enough demand for fans to dump sufficient money into the handful of teams available to participate. A city with an idle stadium should be able to field a team to respond to that kind of demand but the NFL/MLB/etc. restricts the size of the market to help drive large revenues to teams. They are artificially restricting the supply in the market. A free market would allow new entrants to compete for a place on the calendar. No such system exists.
NCAA is actually a pretty bad example to go after. Any school can participate, though not necessarily in the tier they want, and being academic it’s not an open market that just anyone can jump into anyway. You need to be a non-profit, accredited school, etc. So the NCAA isn’t limiting the market at all. All they are doing is limiting where each school can participate in the market, which isn’t great, but it’s miles better than the situation on the pro side.
socraticsilence
Adam- You’d honestly think that Hawaii would just shut up considering what happened when the played Georgia ( though you want to see ugly and Hawaii, watch them open in Gainesville playing Tebow and the Gators in August, it should be humorous, especially considering basically the entire Hawaii team said Florida has a Gimmick offense when they were trying to win Brennan a Heisman).
Ranger 3
Hawaii in Gainsville with no June Jones is the bigger problem.
I completely disagree with the bulk of the comments in this thread. The BCS is a disgrace and everyone knows it. It goes everything we like to think we believe in about fair play and giving everyone an opportunity to succeed. The fact that so many people pay more attention to sports than they do to health care policy is exactly the point… the existence of the BCS sends a terrible message to people that oligarchy is OK and no matter how much they hate it and how offensive the idea is to people they are powerless to do anything about it.
I actually expected that one of things an Obama administration would do (as a secondary priority, of course) would be top end the BCS and possibly other needed reforms to pro sports, such as making it harder for profitable pro teams to relocate to other areas for the purpose of making even more money (greed vs. need). Sure there are bigger issues, but this wouldn’t take up too much time and would have overwhelming support. It would also signal to Joe Sixpack types that Obama isn’t too much of an elitist to not care about his concerns.
Ranger 3
Argh! typos.