College football BCS may violate antitrust law

July 8, 3:01 PMHouston Law and Politics ExaminerDustin Sachs

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The college football Bowl Championship Series (BCS) violates antitrust law. At least that is what Utah Senator Orrin Hatch believes. On Tuesday, the Senate subcommittee that oversees antitrust violation, on which Hatch serves as the top Republican, conducted a standing-room-only hearing on the issue of whether the BCS violates the laws against anti-competitive business practices.

"Frankly, there's an arrogance about the BCS that just drives me nuts," he told reporters. "Hopefully this hearing will open the door to have some people reconsider their positions. And if nothing else, the Justice Department ought to be looking at this." He said that it's clear to him that the BCS is in violation of antitrust laws.

In the hearing, Hatch said that the BCS is exploiting a position of power, "and it's just not right."

After hearing testimony from a lawyer for the Mountain West Conference, a conference that does not receive one of the automatic bids to BCS bowl games, Hatch noted for the record that Utah, which is in the Mountain West, was bypassed for last year's national championship despite going undefeated in the regular season.

Barry Brett, a lawyer for the Mountain West Conference called the BCS "a naked restraint imposed by a self-appointed cartel" in written testimony, and said that a Justice Department investigation would serve the public interest.

Under the BCS, some conferences get automatic bids while others don't. Hatch and other BCS critics view the automatic bid system as anticompetitive behavior, while the BCS says it simply focuses on the teams people want to watch.

"I don't think it's arrogant if you've thought about something for five or six years, and concluded that's it's really hard to do something different. It's hard to see why anyone would litigate this." said Harvey Perlman, chancellor of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the new chairman of the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee.

"We are university presidents, and we are sensitive to what Congress thinks, and sensitive about what the president thinks," Perlman added. "But our primary responsibility is to manage our institutions in ways that protect student athletes, that acknowledges their academic pursuits as well as their athletic pursuits."

The current system features a championship game between the two top teams in the BCS standings, based on two polls and six computer rankings.

"Championships should be decided by competition, not by conspiracy," said Utah President Michael Young.

In his own testimony, Perlman prefaced a comment by saying he didn't want to sound disrespectful to Utah.

"And you don't want to be in this room," Hatch quipped to laugher.

Perlman conceded that some teams, because of factors such as history or reputation, have a better chance to play in the national championship than others.

"The problem is that we don't all play each other, and there's no conceivable way" for that to happen, he said.

It was the second time that congress has held hearing on the BCS this year. Two months ago, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, warned the BCS to switch to a playoff system. If not, Congress would move on his bill that would prevent the NCAA from calling the game a national championship unless it's the outcome of a playoff.

What do you think? Should the BCS be done away with?