Tonight college football fans will be watching the on-field competition in the Bowl Champion Series game between Florida and Oklahoma, which will determine the BCS \u201cnational champion.\u201d\u00a0 But some politicians, in addition to President-elect Barack Obama, are as interested in off-field issues such as how the participating teams in this game are determined and how this game is described.<\/p>\n
Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff claims the BCS system unfairly prevents universities from non-BCS conferences (e.g., the undefeated Utah Utes) from participating in the BCS championship game, which places these schools at a competitive and financial disadvantage in violation of the federal antitrust laws.\u00a0 Two Texas Republican congressmen, Joe Barton and Michael McCaul, along with Illinois Democrat congressman Bobby Rush, have introduced federal legislation that would \u201cprohibit the marketing, promotion, and advertising of a postseason game as a \u2018national championship\u2019 football game, unless it is the result of a playoff system.\u201d\u00a0 Their proposed bill would make any non-compliant football championship game \u201can unfair or deceptive act or practice\u201d that violates the Federal Trade Commission Act.\u00a0 The Utah attorney general\u2019s antitrust investigation and proposed federal legislation both seek to have the major college football championship determined by a playoff system rather than a complex formula based on subjective human polls and computer rankings that determine the #1 and #2 ranked teams at the end of the regular season.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to see why the Utah attorney general and the Texas congressmen (Texas was not selected for the BCS championship game despite defeating Oklahoma during the regular season) want to eliminate the BCS system based on its current adverse effects on universities in their respective states. But it\u2019s a mystery to me why Congressman Rush is co-sponsoring the proposed federal legislation because no Illinois universities have been harmed by the BCS system since its inception.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think the Utah attorney general\u2019s investigation will lead to an antitrust suit (especially if the Utes are voted #1 in the final AP poll, thereby gaining a share of the \u201cnational championship\u201d)\u00a0 or that the proposed federal legislation will be enacted (although characterizing the \u201cBCS national championship\u201d as \u201cdeceptive\u201d speech would raise some interesting First Amendment issues).\u00a0 Regarding sports and politics, it\u2019s once again accurate to say \u201cafter all is said and done, there\u2019s always a lot more said than done.\u201d\u00a0 Enjoy tonight\u2019s game\u2014regardless of whether you think Florida and Texas are the two best college football teams and\/or that the winner should be crowned \u201cnational champion.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tonight college football fans will be watching the on-field competition in the Bowl Champion Series game between Florida and Oklahoma, which will determine the BCS \u201cnational champion.\u201d\u00a0 But some politicians, in addition to President-elect Barack Obama, are as interested in off-field issues such as how the participating teams in this game are determined and how […]<\/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-3195","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\/3195","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=3195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}