{"id":2454,"date":"2008-12-08T08:49:43","date_gmt":"2008-12-08T13:49:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=2454"},"modified":"2008-12-08T09:04:55","modified_gmt":"2008-12-08T14:04:55","slug":"bcs-or-playoff-system-to-determine-football-national-champion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2008\/12\/bcs-or-playoff-system-to-determine-football-national-champion\/","title":{"rendered":"BCS Or Playoff System To Determine Football National Champion?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This year’s Florida-Oklahoma BCS national championship pairing provides strong ammunition for those, including President-elect Barack Obama, advocating there instead should be a playoff system to determine the \u00a0NCAA Division I football national champion.\u00a0 Although Oklahoma and Florida are the two top-ranked teams in the regular season BCS standings, third-ranked Texas defeated Oklahoma 45-35 in October.\u00a0 Obama’s proposal for an eight-team playoff would work well this year because there are seven one-loss BCS conference teams (but none are undefeated) and two undefeated teams from non-BCS conferences.\u00a0 (But which one of the nine would be left out?) Obama has suggested he would be willing “to throw his weight around” to make this happen.\u00a0 What he could do: push to eliminate the federal tax-exempt status of university athletic departments, or perhaps even propose federal legislation to directly regulate the NCAA. \u00a0<\/p>\n

However, neither is likely to happen because Obama will have more important issues on his plate.\u00a0 Moreover, reflecting the historically cozy relationship between sports and politics in America, Congress rarely (if ever) has enacted any sports-specific laws that would adversely affect national sports governing bodies and leagues or their respective members.\u00a0 At most, we might see some future Congressional hearings or calls for a Justice Department investigation regarding whether the BCS system violates the federal antitrust laws — initiated by legislators from states in which a home university’s football team was perceived by constituents to have been treated unfairly.\u00a0 But, after all is said and done, there will be a lot more said than done.\u00a0 Besides, Obama’s proposal would make NCAA Division I football even more like the NFL, probably result in the elimination of many of the 34 existing bowl games, and reduce a source of lively debate among college football fans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This year’s Florida-Oklahoma BCS national championship pairing provides strong ammunition for those, including President-elect Barack Obama, advocating there instead should be a playoff system to determine the \u00a0NCAA Division I football national champion.\u00a0 Although Oklahoma and Florida are the two top-ranked teams in the regular season BCS standings, third-ranked Texas defeated Oklahoma 45-35 in October.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}