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BCS has its day in front of Congress while WAC and MWC finally sign new deal
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Utah University President Michael Young, left, testifies before Congress on
Tuesday. (AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah got what he wanted Tuesday: a hearing to say how awful the BCS really is.
It’s true. It is unfair. And it may be a monopoly. That’s at least the argument Hatch made Tuesday, citing antitrust laws and pleading for the Justice Department to do something about the BCS.
But at the end of the day, it was a futile attempt to try to get anything done because, so far, this is the only thing Hatch can do—ask the Justice Department to do something and then hold a hearing.
“We're aware of his request and will respond as appropriate," Justice Department spokeswoman Gina Talamona told reporters.
All of this also seems a little self-serving of Hatch. Reportedly, Hatch was the only member of the subcommittee that deals with antitrust issues to attend the entire hearing. Also, please note that Hatch is a senator from a state which just had a school snubbed from the BCS title game.
And the day after the hearings, the last two conferences to hold off on signing onto the new BCS deal with ESPN finally jumped on board.
The Western Athletic Conference and the Mountain West finally signed off on the deal, after attempting to change the system this winter and spring.
Basically, both conferences had no choice. They could stand pat in their opposition and stay true to the belief that the BCS is unfair to the five non-BCS conferences.
But if the WAC and MWC did do that, then they would be closed out of participating (if any of the teams qualified) in the BCS this year and would not reap the financial benefits of the BCS.
Even if no team from the so-called mid-major conferences are invited to the BCS, those conferences still get a share of the money generated from it.
“That’s the way both conferences are looking at it: We have no choice,” Boise State president Bob Kustra told the Idaho Statesman. “Everybody understood that there are so many financial ramifications to not signing it. We simply didn’t have any elbow room on this.”
So the BCS is still around and will be so for a while, at least until 2015.
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