SEC Talk

I’m back from vacation and into the countdown until kickoff… I can’t believe we are under two months!

Sports Illustrated ran an article by Sen. Orrin Hatch, entitled Leveling the Playing Field, that made me take a different look at the whole topic.

Before reading the article, I had mixed emotions about the whole Bowl Championship Series. Most of my ire was directed at Notre Dame, because I feel like it gets a pass. If ND is in the top eight of the BCS standings, the Irish get an automatic bid. No other team gets that honor.

But when it comes to a true championship, I go back and forth. I like the bowls, that there is some pride on the line. But since the inception of the BCS system, the secondary bowls have a much shabbier feel to them. Nothing to play for anymore.

And the gap between the last regular season game (or conference championship) is an eternity, meaning that there could be 35-40 days between games for the top two teams. And that’s when I start thinking a playoff would work. Heck, the players are out of school at that point, what’s another 3-4 weeks?

Then I read Sen. Hatch’s op-ed piece, and got a whole different take on the situation.

Sen. Hatch sites the Sherman Antitrust Act (don’t glaze over yet!), which prohibits contracts that exclude others from competition. And while the Act was written with business in mind, few would argue that college football has morphed into big business.

But the most compelling argument in my mind was when Sen. Hatch talked about the difference in payouts between the “elite” BCS conferences and the other conferences.  In particular, he notes that every team from a BCS conference gets a huge payout… whether they win a game or not. Teams from other conferences get a much lower payout.  He notes that:

“under the BCS formula the Mountain West received $9.8 million—roughly half of what the three bigger conferences got. And despite having the nation’s only other undefeated team, Boise State, the Western Athletic Conference received just $3.2 million in BCS revenue.”

This has ramifications well beyond the football field. We aren’t talking the difference between I-A and I-AA (I know, I know… Football Bowl Subdivision and Football Championship Subdivision… I hate that). We are talking teams in the same subdivision not getting equal payouts, which guarantees unequal budgets for recruiting, facilities and coaching salaries. In other words, it keeps the playing field horrifically uneven.

And it goes deeper. Football budgets often help pay for other sports. So the disparity in payouts keeps the smaller conferences from being able to keep up with the Jones’… or the Florida’s.

To read the full article from Sports Illustrated, click HERE, or go to http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1157360/index.htm