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Fight over BCS future moves to Congress
By JESSE J. HOLLAND
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON — Congress will
step into the debate about the college football postseason with a
hearing Thursday that will include testimony from some of the sport's
most powerful figures.
Some schools shut out from
the automatic bids in the Bowl Championship Series claim the system
amounts to
an illegal monopoly, giving the biggest schools the best shot
at the lucrative bowl postseason.
But even one of the Bowl
Championship Series' most vocal opponents wants Congress to stay out of
the postseason plan.
"Whatever issues may
exist, it really should be worked among the university presidents
without the intervention of Congress," Tulane president Scott Cowen
said.
He founded an anti-BCS
organization designed to give schools such as Tulane a better shot at
one of the big end-of-season bowl games.
Joining Cowen on the
witness list at a House Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday on the BCS
are NCAA president Myles Brand, Big Ten commissioner James Delany and
former NFL quarterback Steve Young.
While no one expects
legislation to result, both supporters and detractors of the bowl system
were hoping to put the best public face possible on their arguments.
Cowen's Presidential
Coalition for Athletic Reform and BCS representatives are to meet in
Chicago next Monday to discuss the series' future. The current BCS
contract expires following the 2005 season.
BCS supporters say the
system does not violate antitrust rules because it is open to all
schools through two at-large bids.
"The BCS is giving the
public exactly what it wants — a national championship game and other
high-quality bowl matchups that appeal to fans while being open and
inclusive of all Division I-A institutions," Delany and Kevin Weiberg,
the Big 12 commissioner, wrote in an opinion piece offered to newspapers
last month.
Delany was traveling and
in meetings Tuesday and Wednesday and did not have time to grant
interviews, a spokesman said.
The BCS was established
before the 1998 season to determine the national champion by matching
the top two teams in either the Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl or
Fiesta Bowl.
The champions from the
Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-10 and Southeastern
conferences receive automatic bids. There are also two at-large bids
that are open to all Division I-A schools.
Teams from non-BCS
conferences are guaranteed a bid to one of the four bowl games if they
are ranked in the top six. But in the system's five-year history, no
team from a non-BCS conference has played in one of the four major bowl
games.
The projected revenue for
the four 2004 BCS games is about $90 million. But if no team from
outside the six BCS conferences makes one of the bowls, only about $6
million will go to the non-BCS schools.
"This conglomeration of
money and power is having a cascading impact far beyond major college
football, as the de facto exclusion of non-BCS schools from major bowl
games is resulting in those schools having lower athletic budgets,
inferior athletic facilities, and rising deficits," said Rep. John
Conyers of Michigan, the committee's top Democrat.
Tulane, a member of
Conference USA, went undefeated in 1998 but was excluded from the BCS
bowls because it was in 11th place in the BCS standings.
Cowen has called the
system "anticompetitive" and said it has "characteristics of a cartel."
He also said in July that
Tulane had met with antitrust lawyers. But Cowen said this week he would
not be in favor of legislation.
02/23/2007 10:36 AM
Copyright 2003
Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may
not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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