Political football

Enjoy today’s Rose Bowl, because if President Obama and several members of Congress have their way, the 107-year-old contest may be reinvented again -- to crown a less disputed college football champion.

Frustration over the Bowl Championship Series has been simmering for a decade, but Obama heated it up last year when he told reporters, “We need a playoff.” Later, he said on “60 Minutes” that he would throw his “weight around a little bit” to do away with the BCS and replace it with a tournament.

A bill from Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Texas) would go a long way toward getting that done. It would prohibit the BCS from marketing any postseason college football game as a “national championship” unless its participants were chosen through a “fair and equitable playoff system.” Because the BCS exists to choose which teams have the right to vie for the championship, that should be enough to do away with it. That would mean the end of the Rose, Orange, Fiesta and Sugar bowls (the most prestigious) as they operate today, though they might still be able to host playoff games.

Bills like Barton’s tend to surface whenever a lawmaker’s home team gets snubbed by the BCS, and we wouldn’t take this one seriously if not for the support from Obama -- and the fact that the bill was approved last month by a House subcommittee. Although a playoff system might add excitement for fans and could help settle some dinner-table disputes, it wouldn’t put an end to controversies. And we’d much rather have college presidents decide how they want to structure postseason play than politicians.

Ironically, the BCS was created in 1998 as a way of ending arguments about fairness. Using polls and computer rankings, it identifies the top teams and determines which two will play for the championship. This is supposedly more scientific than the old method of picking a champion by polling coaches or sportswriters, but there are invariably undefeated teams that don’t believe they were treated fairly by a system designed to favor teams in the six biggest conferences.

They have a point, but a playoff system would extend the season by as much as three weeks, putting added academic and physical pressure on student athletes. It would also undermine the historic role of the major postseason bowls as a showcase for top teams. And some kind of winnowing process would still be needed to identify the playoff teams, meaning that sports fans would still be having many of the same arguments they have now. Balanced against this is that a tournament would be very popular with fans, and might be slightly more equitable.

The college presidents who set policy for the National Collegiate Athletic Assn.’s top division have repeatedly rejected the idea of a playoff system. We’re not entirely convinced they’re doing the right thing -- the big conferences are making plenty of money from the current system and have no incentive to switch -- but we still suspect they know what’s better for their institutions and athletes than members of Congress do. We’re also quite certain that Congress has more important matters to work on than this one.