Should Congress get involved with college football?

That’s the question, and your comments are welcome below. My first thought is “no.”  But since many schools are government subsidized in some way – including the UCONN Huskies and the Texas A&M Aggies – and media cash involved, the United States Congress is thinking about getting their all knowing legislators involved.

Here’s a clip from Breitbart.

The current system “leaves nearly half of all the teams in college football at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to qualifying for the millions of dollars paid out every year,” the Senate Judiciary’s subcommittee on antitrust, competition policy and consumer rights said in a statement Wednesday announcing the hearings.

Under the BCS, some conferences get automatic bids to participate in series, while others do not.

Obama and some members of Congress favor a playoff-type system to determine the national champion. The BCS features a championship game between the two top teams in the BCS standings, based on two polls and six computer ratings.

I’m not a huge college football fan, but I do have a couple of dogs in the hunt since I like UCONN and the Aggies. When you have 120 teams just in the bowl subdivision, how are you supposed to work out a playoff system? Football is not like baseball where a team can play five or six games in a week.

Even if you picked just the top eight teams, you’re talking three weeks and only seven games. If you went with the top 16 teams, you’re talking adding another week.

Either way, you’ve got to figure out the best eight or 16 teams somehow; someone will get pretty mad every year. Just this year, there were 34 bowl games, so of the 120 teams more than half of them got to play post-season and were able to generate some TV money.

You know my opinion. The government should not be involved in education at all, which would keep Congress out of the issue, but…

Discuss…

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Steve McGough

Steve's a part-time conservative blogger. Steve grew up in Connecticut and has lived in Washington, D.C. and the Bahamas. He resides in Connecticut, where he’s comfortable six months of the year.

4 Comments

  1. Bill on March 27, 2009 at 12:56 am

    Of course our Congresscritters should investigate all football. Isn’t this at least as important an issue as who injected what into which overpaid prima Donna’s derriere?



  2. Erik Blazynski on March 27, 2009 at 1:34 am

    well, isn't this what really matters?



  3. PatRiot on March 27, 2009 at 4:26 am

    The only way congress should get involved is to pay the same price, nay more, that the rest of us do. 

    As a matter of fact.  They make enough to to TRY to curry favor with me by buying me a ticket.  Throw in a ticket for a brown shirt to keep and eye on me.  I will repay the favor by teaching the brown shirt how to properly sing the National Anthem – especially the part about "…the land of the free and the home of the brave. "



  4. SoundOffSister on March 28, 2009 at 4:37 am

    No question about it.  Congress should absolutely become involved with college football under that little known constitutional amendment guaranteeing annual playoffs.  (That's the amendment immediately preceeding the one guaranteeing free health care.)  Besides, the Congressional hearings would be far more interesting, and no doubt more informative, than watching Tim Geithner every day.



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