If I were Barack Obama's mother, the title of this post is exactly what I would have yelled at Barack after seeing this article. Now let's not get confused about this... I am strongly in favor of at least a 4-team playoff for college football. Preferably I would like to see an 8 team playoff, which actually gives a team like Utah or Boise State a chance to win it all. However, I can't even begin to imagine what our president and congress are doing getting involved in the BCS's decisions. This isn't like the whole steroids controversy with baseball. After all, steroids are illegal whether the MLB decides to punish its athletes for steroid use or not. What we are talking about here is a business deciding how to package its product, and nothing more. The government has no business being involved here, particularly when the current economy is what should really be attracting their attention.
This whole issue was born out of an anti-trust lawsuit that the University of Utah is bringing against the BCS. The BCS owns the rights to the national championship game and the four historically significant bowl games, the Rose Bowl, the Orange Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl, and the Sugar Bowl. The BCS has its own ranking system to determine who will be playing in each of those bowl games. The BCS and the other bowl owners have their own ties with the different conferences to decide who will play in which game. It's very much a business as the NCAA doesn't control who plays where and they don't control the dispersal of revenues from the games. Teams are invited to play in the bowls... there is no obligation. This is exactly why the BCS can tell Notre Dame (who has a gigantic fan base) that if they achieve at least a certain record for the season, they will be included in a BCS bowl game. Personally I think that deal is lame and I'm surprised Notre Dame still has a huge following despite their many failures, but that's not up to me.
Lousy Irish. Oh wait a sec, I'm Irish. That kind of hurts...
But this whole situation reminds me of something that my friend's brother said when we were in high school. As Robby and I were playing a board game called Axis and Allies, a game with complex rules that we didn't fully understand, Robb's brother Ryan came in, saw our board, and exclaimed, "What the heck are the Brits doing in America??" Indeed Ryan, what the heck ARE the Brits doing in America? If you can't make the connection, Barack Obama and Congress can be equated to our friendly allies from "across the pond" and America is the BCS (that's a tough analogy to throw out there... it makes me squeamish). It's absurd to think that one should be associated with the other during these times of national crapulence due to the unmitigated flow of newer and more terrible kinds of mortgage loans, but hey here we are. I just can't keep my stomach from churning.
1 comment:
Amen Brother!
Post a Comment