Congress’ Agenda Shouldn’t Include BCS

Congress didn’t call me to appear at Wednesday’s bowl championship series hearings on Capitol Hill, but if it did my response would have been:

Butt out.

There is plenty about college football that warrants intense scrutiny, foremost the fact new Kansas State Coach Ron Prince is only the fourth African American coach among 119 Division I-A schools.

You could have held informative hearings as to why coaches make all the money when the players make all the tackles.

Holding a hearing about the BCS because some congressmen apparently want a playoff, however, may have been the biggest waste of time since the last time Maurice Clarett had something to say.

Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Texas) convened these hearings titled, “Determining a Champion on the Field: A Comprehensive Review of the BCS and Postseason College Football.”

ESPN televised the proceedings, but that doesn’t mean they were important.

ESPN also televises poker.

Barton, who attended a Texas A&M; school that finished 5-6 in football this season, stated beforehand that “the current system of determining who’s No. 1 appears deeply flawed.”

Actually, the system this year worked fine.

USC and Texas, the only undefeated teams, will play for the national title.

Now let’s call this BCS investigation to order!

To my mind, the most interesting question of the day was posed by Barton to Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany:

“Why are there 11 teams in the Big Ten?”

Delany, obviously unprepared and reeling under this intense grilling, had no answer.

Barton also wondered whether his calling these hearings might jeopardize his getting Rose Bowl tickets.

Best guess: Yep.

Asked on Sunday why he was being summoned to Washington, Kevin Weiberg, the Big 12 commissioner and BCS coordinator, responded, “I really don’t know precisely why we are having this meeting.”

Precisely.

The pressing issues concerning college football have been settled by its membership, so Congress should really move on to more important things, namely just about everything else.

A few years ago, schools outside the six major conferences claimed the BCS was a monopoly and it appeared the sport was headed toward a massive lawsuit.

That dispute was amicably settled; maybe Barton didn’t get the paper that day.

Starting next year, an extra BCS game will be added to the bowl rotation to open up two more at-large access spots for all 119 major college teams. More of the bowl money will be shared.

The six “BCS” conferences, plus independent Notre Dame, and the five conferences outside the structure signed off on the deal. ABC will keep the Rose Bowl and Fox agreed to a four-year deal to televise the Fiesta, Sugar and Orange bowls.

Next year, the Fiesta will play host to its game and then, a week later, play host to the BCS national title game.

This agreement pretty much killed any idea of an NFL-style approach.

You can talk all day about a playoff but that doesn’t mean you have to bother busy people or think the Founding Fathers would have cared.

Long story short:

College football, deeply entangled in its multilayered bowl system, became big business in the early 1980s when the Supreme Court ruled the NCAA could not control television rights.

With all football-playing schools not being equal, the networks threw their money at the games people wanted to watch: Ohio State vs. Michigan; UCLA vs. USC or Notre Dame vs. Anybody.

Toledo vs. Akron was not as high on the list.

The six power conferences -- Big Ten, Pacific 10, Atlantic Coast, Big East, Southeastern, Big 12 -- ended up with a disproportionate share of the money pie and it created a class system.

The have-nots, led by Tulane President Scott Cowen, threatened the haves with legal action and the parties ended up cutting a deal.

As was pointed out by the Big Ten commissioner Wednesday, college football is more likely to go back to the old bowl system than to go forward with a playoff.

The BCS is deeply flawed and has produced a series of kooky outcomes, but it also depends on whom you talk to.

Last year, after Texas and California became embroiled in a real scrape over qualification to the Rose Bowl, a Texas state senator, Jeff Wentworth, introduced a bill that would have prohibited all teams from Texas playing in the BCS unless a playoff system was created.

Had that bill passed, Texas would have been barred from playing USC next month for the national title and Wentworth would have been on his high horse two days ahead of a posse.

Memory recalls the idea fizzled at roughly the time frame Texas opened the 2005 season ranked No. 2.

In August, a reporter’s query regarding the progress of Wentworth’s bill was met with a pleasant response from an office spokesperson:

“I believe that died in committee.”

If Barton or Wentworth or any other politician has a really “neat” playoff bracket idea, let them do what dozens of ordinary citizens have done without taxpayers’ expense:

Submit it to me in writing.

And I’ll submit it to a waste bin.

Gary a Goner?

The Denver Post is reporting that Gary Barnett is on his way out as Colorado coach and, if that’s true, this is the way we figured it would play out.

Barnett could weather the scandal at Colorado in which some of his players were accused of using sex and alcohol to lure recruits to campus.

Barnett, though, was never going to survive a crisis in which his Buffaloes got outscored, 100-6, in their last two games.

You knew by the look on his face that Barnett was in trouble last Saturday when he left Reliant Stadium after a 70-3 defeat to Texas.

Colorado, at 7-5, won the watered-down Big 12 North Division and still earned a bid to the Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando, Fla.

You can credit a fair amount of “Barnett fatigue” in Boulder to the sex-and-alcohol story that became national news in 2004.

Some faculty members and women’s rights groups called for Barnett’s dismissal, but an independent panel concluded Barnett did not “knowingly sanction” the practice.

Barnett was reinstated as coach and the school instituted tighter recruiting controls which, you could argue, put the football program at a competitive disadvantage and would eventually lead to a slow-bleed death.

Yet, he seemed on the verge of signing a contract extension only weeks ago after Colorado opened 7-2. The contract was waiting to be signed, lacking only a few last-minute addendums.

Then, Colorado suffered a gut-wrenching defeat to Iowa State on Nov. 12.

“We’ve never gotten over it,” Barnett said last Saturday of the Iowa State loss. “I can’t for the life of me figure out why.... We’re more of a fragile team than I thought.”

Barnett, 59, left Northwestern for Colorado in 1999 and has led the Buffaloes to a 49-38 record and the Big 12 championship in 2001.

And it’s been mostly bad news since.

Hurry-Up Offense

One year too late, coaches voting in the USA Today poll released their final ballots and brought transparency to the BCS system.

Frankly, the coaches couldn’t have been luckier in getting to declare their ballots in a season in which USC and Texas finished as the only undefeated teams.

Last year, when we really needed to look under the hood, the coaches hid behind a veil of secrecy and made us wonder whether there was any manipulation going on in the ugly battle involving Texas and California for the No. 4 BCS spot and automatic bid to the Rose Bowl.

Still, it was fun this week to poke through the coaches’ votes.

Texas Coach Mack Brown, what do you know, voted USC No. 1.

Question: Would he have done so had Penn State been a third undefeated team fighting Texas for No. 2?

* The Notre Dame factor. Coaches were all over the map on the Irish -- only cementing their polarizing status.

Texas A&M; Coach Dennis Franchione had Notre Dame at No. 3; South Carolina Coach Steve Spurrier voted the Irish at No. 14, behind Texas Christian and Texas Tech.

Was it a surprise that Washington Coach Tyrone Willingham, fired last year by Notre Dame, voted the Irish ninth?

Oregon Coach Mike Bellotti voted his team fourth -- and if everyone else would have, the Ducks might have made it to a BCS game.

Here’s a shocker: Tennessee Coach Phil Fulmer did not include nemesis Spurrier’s squad in his top 25. Spurrier had South Carolina at No. 21.

* Tom Craft was fired at San Diego State this week, leaving the school to search for its seventh football coach since 1980. Former Michigan quarterback Jim Harbaugh, coaching at the University of San Diego, is interested in the job but this could be the perfect reclamation project for reclamation project Rick Neuheisel.

Out-of-work Dennis Erickson, who once turned down the USC job Pete Carroll got, is also taking phone calls.

*

BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX

Bowl lineup

BOWL (PAYOUT); SITE

LINE; WHEN; TV

NEW ORLEANS ($750,000)

Arkansas State (6-5) vs. So. Mississippi (6-5); Lafayette, La.

So. Mississippi by 17; Dec. 20

5 p.m. ; ESPN

GMAC ($750,000)

Texas El Paso (8-3) vs. Toledo (8-3); Mobile, Ala.

Toledo by 3; Dec. 21

5 p.m. ESPN

LAS VEGAS ($750,000)

California (7-4) vs. Brigham Young (6-5); Las Vegas

California by 6; Dec. 22

5 p.m. ESPN

POINSETTIA ($750,000)

Colorado State (6-5) vs. Navy (7-4); San Diego

Navy by 2; Dec. 22.

7:30 p.m. ESPN2

FORT WORTH ($750,000)

Kansas (6-5) vs. Houston (6-5); Fort Worth;

Kansas by 3; Dec. 23.

5 p.m. ESPN

HAWAII ($750,000)

Nevada (8-3) vs. Central Florida (8-4) ; Honolulu

Nevada by 1 1/2 ; Dec. 24

5:30 p.m. ESPN

MOTOR CITY ($750,000)

Memphis (6-5) vs. Akron (7-5); Detroit

Memphis by 6; Dec. 26.

1 p.m. ; ESPN

CHAMPS SPORTS ($862,500)

Clemson (7-4) vs. Colorado (7-5); Orlando, Fla.

No line; Dec. 27.

2 p.m. ; ESPN

INSIGHT ($750,000)

Arizona State (6-5) vs. Rutgers (7-4); Phoenix

Arizona State by 12; Dec. 27.

5:30 p.m. ; ESPN

MPC COMPUTERS ($750,000)

Boise State (9-3) vs. Boston College (8-3); Boise, Idaho

Boise State by 1; Dec. 28.

1:30 p.m. ; ESPN

ALAMO ($1.65 million)

Michigan (7-4) vs. Nebraska (7-4) ; San Antonio

Michigan by 13; Dec. 28.

5 p.m. ESPN

EMERALD ($750,000)

Georgia Tech (7-4) vs. Utah (6-5); San Francisco

Georgia Tech by 8; Dec. 29

1:30 p.m. ; ESPN

HOLIDAY ($2 million)

Oregon (10-1) vs. Oklahoma (7-4); San Diego

Oregon by 3; Dec. 29

5 p.m. ; ESPN

MUSIC CITY ($780,000)

Minnesota (7-4) vs. Virginia (6-5); Nashville

Minnesota by 3; Dec. 30

9 a.m.; ESPN

SUN ($1.575 million)

UCLA (9-2) vs. Northwestern (7-4); El Paso

UCLA by 3 1/2 ; Dec. 30

11 a.m.; Ch. 2

INDEPENDENCE ($1.2 million)

South Carolina (7-4) vs. Missouri (6-5); Shreveport, La.

South Carolina by 3 1/2 ; Dec. 30

12:30 p.m. ; ESPN

PEACH ($2.35 million)

Miami (9-2) vs. Louisiana State (10-2); Atlanta

No line; Dec. 30

4:30 p.m. ; ESPN

MEINEKE ($750,000)

South Florida (6-5) vs. North Carolina State (6-5); Charlotte, N.C.

N.C. State by 6; Dec. 31

8 a.m. ; ESPN2

LIBERTY ($1.5 million)

Tulsa (8-4) vs. Fresno State (8-4); Memphis, Tenn.

Fresno State by 7; Dec. 31

10 a.m. ; ESPN

HOUSTON ($1.2 million)

Texas Christian (10-1) vs. Iowa State (7-4); Houston

Texas Christian by 3 1/2 ; Dec. 31

11:30 a.m. ; ESPN2

COTTON ($2.5 million)

Texas Tech (9-2) vs. Alabama (9-2); Dallas

Texas Tech by 1 1/2 ; Jan. 2

8 a.m. ; Ch. 11

OUTBACK ($2.85 million)

Iowa (7-4) vs. Florida (8-3) ; Tampa, Fla.

Florida by 3; Jan. 2

8 a.m. ; ESPN

GATOR ($1.6 million)

Louisville (9-2) vs. Virginia Tech (10-2); Jacksonville, Fla.

Virginia Tech by 8 1/2 ; Jan. 2

9:30 a.m. ; Ch. 4

CAPITAL ONE ($5.312 million)

Wisconsin (9-3) vs. Auburn (9-2) ; Orlando, Fla.

Auburn by 10 1/2 ; Jan. 2

10 a.m. ; Ch. 7

FIESTA ($14-17 million)

Notre Dame (9-2) vs. Ohio State (9-2); Tempe, Ariz.

Ohio State by 3 1/2 ; Jan. 2

2 p.m. ; Ch. 7

SUGAR ($14-17 million)

West Virginia (10-1) vs. Georgia (10-2); Atlanta

Georgia by 8; Jan. 2

5:30 p.m. ; Ch. 7

ORANGE ($14-17 million)

Penn State (10-1) vs. Florida State (8-4); Miami

Penn State by 8; Jan. 3

5 p.m. ; Ch. 7

ROSE ($14.998 million)

USC (12-0) vs. Texas (12-0); Pasadena

USC by 7; Jan. 4

5 p.m. ; Ch. 7

All times Pacific