If communism is wrong, I don’t want to be right

Ok, calm down.  I don’t *really* mean that.   I was making a point, but my sarcasm font was turned off.

Teh stoopid hit the fan in Washington this week.  Regarding college football.  Yep, Rep. Joe Barton is at it again and he got a sub-committee of some other committee to spend a couple of hours to beating down John Swofford and the BCS.  Let me be clear, I don’t particularly like the BCS.  If I had my way, we’d go back to the old system and let the media, computers and even *gasp* the unwashed masses that are bloggers decide who the ‘national’ champion is.  However, now that Congress is involved, I feel I must comment, lest they ‘fix’ it like they have air pollution, Iraq, monetary policy, racial inequality, gays in the military, political graft, corporate governance and Amtrak.

The number of times I want to hear about this 'quality of competition' crap.

In other words, no thanks.

My favorite is Joe Barton’s pontification

“It’s like communism,” he said. “You can’t fix it.”

Really? Really!??

Of course, Congress brought in a number of others to testify, like Boise State’s AD, who noted the Broncs have had a number of undefeated season and didn’t play for the National Championship.  Much was made of Utah’s undefeated season this year.  I didn’t hear anyone mention the Hawaii Juggernaut from ’07.  Strange.

I don’t recognize BYU’s championship from 84.  Sorry, you don’t play the season they played and the team they played in the Bowl they played and win the national championship.  Perhaps I am not the only one and there is now a BYU bias at work.  I don’t know.

This has been cast as a David vs. Goliath battle the whole time.  Even Rep. Bobby Rush left his AWOL long enough to put this gem out

“How is this fair?” asked the subcommittee chairman, Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois, who has co-sponsored Barton’s bill. “How can we justify this system … are the big guys getting together and shutting out the little guys?”

Well, besides representing the market place (as Swofford noted).  WAIT, I thought the BCS was communism! It is fair because without the big guys, the little guys would still be playing in 8000 seat stadiums without ESPN2 and FoxSports (fill in your favorite direction).  You want a playoff?  Play in a real conference.  Perhaps the real solution is a conference rating system that assesses conference eligibility for the BCS.  Now that might make some sense.  I am talking to you, Big East.

In the end, the Senator made the point that is best: it is about the money.  Interesting that the Mountain West proposal is only good for the little guys that are in the Mountain West.  In the end, that is the MWC’s issue.  My guess is that if the MWC gets an automatic bid, they’d feel much less like the system is unfair.  Perhaps my conference rating system would fix that.

A playoff won’t.