When the U.S. Congress decided a few years ago to ignore national security, economic concerns, and health care reform in favor of holding hearings to determine whether professional athletes were shooting themselves with steroids that, at the time, were allowed under league rules, I was fuming. Whether or not baseball is our national pasttime (which it is), Congress isn""t there to investigate the integrity of professional sports. ??Now the Department of Justice is contemplating an investigation into the BCS and the critics are coming out of the woodwork. ""Not their job,"" ""Waste of Time,"" ""Much Bigger Fish to Fry"": I have heard it all. But the bottom line is that the BCS situation is far different from the steroid investigation. ??In fact, an investigation into the Anti-Trust compliance of the BCS is fully justified and a perfectly good use of federal resources. Here's why:??The BCS is essentially a system for allocating educational grants. The money schools receive from playing in BCS bowls funds many educational activities and as Boise State can attest to, BCS success is a big factor in improving an institution's standing within the higher education industry. ??Why the government? ??The majority of BCS schools are public institutions, reliant upon public dollars not only to fund the classes that players attend, but also the stadiums they play in and the equipment they play with. Coaches are public employees and the proceeds from these programs help lessen the burden of public financing declines on public higher education. ??Why Anti-Trust???The BCS is not the NCAA. The only connection the BCS has to the NCAA is by a license granted by the NCAA to have the BCS take over the Division 1 FBS Championship. Remember, the NCAA has its own Division 1 Football Championship. ??The BCS is also not an association of all participating schools. It was founded by ""Power 6"" schools, is governed by the rules these schools agree upon and is designed to first and foremost serve the interest of those schools and conferences only. ??Why involve the non-BCS schools???BCS programs need other competition. More teams equal more bowls equal more money. Essentially, the non-BCS schools are in the system to serve as the New York Generals to the BCS Schools' Harlem Globetrotters. Though the concessions made to entice these schools to join have resulted in recent non-BCS successes on the BCS stage, it was never the intent of the BCS to have TCU playing Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl (evidenced by the mere fact that those two teams were paired together in the selection process).??What is Wrong With That???The BCS schools have designed the system to funnel the money to themselves. Each school in the conference shares in the winnings brought home by a given team's BCS bid. With the power conferences guaranteed one team a piece and many times receiving multiple bids, the money is destined to stay in the hands of the BCS powers. Even in the rare event that a TCU or Boise State earns an invite, the money funneled down the ranks of the MWC or the WAC pales in comparison to the money flowing through the perennial 2-bid SEC. ??Just look at TCU's willingness to accept the absurd travel demands of joining the Big East and you should see fairly clearly the monetary benefits of being a part of the ""in crowd"" of this BCS system. ??The BCS is a fairly clear instance of Anti-Trust violation. The system takes a pot of money put together by a group of schools. Then it adds some more money by inviting other schools to participate in the lottery that they control. The system then guarantees that its founders will at the very least recoup their contribution to the pot (single bid) and then takes the rest of the pot and divides among the programs and conferences that succeed (2nd bids or non-AQ teams). ??In a best case scenario, non-BCS schools and conferences recoup their investment. Remember, this is the worst case scenario for the ""in crowd."" But because the odds of getting to this best case scenario—of getting a non-AQ team into the BCS—pale in comparison to the odds a power six conference has of getting a second bid. The lottery is inherently flawed. ??Thus, the BCS is not only competitively unfair, but also financially unethical and perhaps even legally impermissible. To compare this to the steroid issue (another potentially viable investigation gone horribly off track) is to completely trivialize the enormous impact that college athletics has come to have on funding for public higher education. There is no doubt about it, the Department of Justice is fully justified in investigating the legality of the BCS.
-Does the government have a place interfering in any sports organization? E-mail Max at max.sternberg@yahoo.com
