Passan Jeff - Death to the bcs: the definitive case against the bowl championship series
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- Book:Death to the bcs: the definitive case against the bowl championship series
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- Year:2014;2010
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A team of award-winning sports reporters takes down the Great Satan of college sports: the Bowl Championship Series. Every college sport picks its champion by a postseason tournament, except for one: Division I-A football. Instead of a tournament, fans are subjected to the Bowl Championship Series, an arcane mix of polling and mathematical rankings that results in just two teams playing for the championship. It is, without a doubt, the most hated institution in all of sports. A recent Sports Illustrated poll found that more than 90 percent of sports fans oppose the BCS, yet this system has remained in place for more than a decade. Built upon top-notch investigative reporting, Death to the BCS at last reveals the truth about this monstrous entity and offers a simple solution for fixing it. Death to the BCS includes findings from interviews with power players, as well as research into federal tax records, Congressional testimony, and private contracts, revealing: The truth behind the Cartel--The anonymous suits who run the BCS and who profit handsomely by protecting it The flawed math and corruption that determine which teams participate in the national championship How the system hurts competition by perpetuating cupcake schedules How mid-major teams are systematically denied a chance to play for the championship How a comprehensive sixteen-team playoff plan can solve the problem while enhancing profitability The first book to lay out the unseemly inner workings of the BCS in full detail, Death to the BCS is a rousing manifesto for bringing fairness back to one of our most beloved sports.
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Matt Scheff
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Easterbrook
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Table of Contents
To our families, for whom the BCS cant die soon enough
INTRODUCTION
The Cartel
For two years, we pored over thousands of pages of tax filings, university contracts, and congressional testimony. We crisscrossed the country interviewing the pertinent power players in college football, on and off the record. We filed dozens of Freedom of Information requests. We wanted to answer one question: Why is college football really saddled with the brain-dead Bowl Championship Series? We sought the truth because tens of millions of fans deserve it.
We discovered an ocean of corruption: sophisticated scams, mind-numbing waste, and naked political dealsenough to prove that the confused excuses spat out by the suits in charge and regurgitated by their well-paid public relations people are empty drivel. While the sleaze should be enough to cause the death of the BCS, its simply emblematic of a long battle best represented by two men. One stands for common sense and the possibilities the great game can offer. The other is about protecting the one-sided system that enriches and empowers the very few who led college football into this morass, even as it runs counter to their teams competitive interests.
Youve heard of the first. His name is Joe Paterno. Hes the eighty-three-year-old icon who, after sixty-one seasons coaching at Penn State, the last forty-five as head coach, is as steadfast a proponent of a playoff as ever. He is us. He is you. He is everyone whose gag reflex engages upon the mere thought of how college football crowns its national champion.
You might not have heard of the other. His name is Jim Delany. Hes the balding, sixty-two-year-old former assistant district attorney who is the commissioner of Penn States conference, the Big Ten. He is one of the most powerful people in college athletics. His influence far outweighs that of even the NCAA president, because Delany belongs to the group that hijacked college football and refuses to let go.
Paterno may be the king of the sport, but Delany is the ayatollah, speaking the word of God.
And that word is no.
No to a playoff. No to an extra championship game following the bowl season. No to any semblance of sanity in Americas greatest spectator sport. No to anything but the loathsome, odious, reviled BCS.
For twelve years, the BCS has decided the national champion at the highest level of college football, Division I-A. Two human polls and one computer ranking combine to determine the two teams that play in the BCS National Championship Game. Other top-ranked teams go to the BCS-supported Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl, and Fiesta Bowl. Delany helped run the BCS amid widespread skepticism. Its been a bigger disaster than anyone could have imagined. Its approval rating hovers around 10 percent. And yet Delany draws the following conclusion: Its been incredibly successful.
For him and his cronies, sure. The BCS is a group of similar businesses that bands together in search of money and power, harming the public along the way. It gives off a wretched smellthat of a cartel. While a labor lawyer might disagree on the words usage, it fits for the BCS power brokers: Rather than jack up gas prices or cut off the oil supply like OPEC can, the college football Cartel controls the postseason and the revenue it generates while pretending a playoff would put at risk something as sacred as the history and tradition of the Papajohns.com Bowl.
Officially, the BCS is run by twelve men: the commissioners of major college footballs eleven conferences and the athletic director of Notre Dame. Realistically, six men control college football: the commissioners of the Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10, and Southeastern conferences. They squirrel away the sports revenues, crush any challenge to their supremacy, and make decision after ill-fated decision that takes college football eons further from what its fans want.
Alongside Delany, Mike Slive (SEC), Dan Beebe (Big 12), John Swofford (ACC), Larry Scott (Pac-10), and John Marinatto (Big East) guide the BCS to a place where their conferences receive automatic bids to the BCS games with massive payouts. This is college footballs Cartel.
While the big six conferences hogged 82.3 percent of the $155.2 million paid out by BCS games last year, the Mountain West Conference, Western Athletic Conference, Mid-American Conference, Conference USA, and Sun Belt Conference scraped along with the leftovers. The Cartel and the BCS exist to consolidate control among the power conferences and position themselves to never let go. Suggesting a playoff to the Cartel is futile because it doesnt care how big the postseason revenue pie gets or even if its slice would grow. It simply wants to ensure that no one else holds the knife.
The six Cartel members work with a legion of henchmenthe executive directors of a couple dozen bowl games and a few high-powered athletic directors and school presidentsto dictate how the sport operates. Formally, the Cartel doesnt exist. Neither, for that matter, does the BCS. Its not a legal construct, just a series of contracts among various entities, which makes it hard for opponents to trace it, sue it, or pin it down. As much as some government officials would love to bust it using the Sherman Antitrust Act before the current BCS television deals run out in 2014the Justice Department announced in January that it might open an investigationthe case is not a certain winner, even if the BCS seems so patently wrong.
Five teams finished the 2009 regular season with perfect records. Since the BCS exists to provide a title game between the two teams it deems bestand, more often than not, the results are controversial thanks to flawed ranking systemsthe other three undefeated teams were left with consolation matchups. This is not the best way to determine a national champion as much as a get-rich, stay-rich scheme carried out at the expense of fairness, taxpayers, and college football fans.
It has given the commissioners power and significance, said Gene Bleymaier, the athletic director at Boise State University. Prior to this, conference commissioners had very little power. No one knew them. They had very little significance outside of their conference.
Paterno is too old to care about perceived power. He wants whats fair, and that is a playoff. Four times he led Penn State to undefeated seasons and didnt win a national championship. Perhaps no other person has been so wronged by the lack of a proper postseason. It may be the only issue where Paterno is considered a forward-thinking revolutionary. Paterno translated the Aeneid from Latin to English in high school and said the epic poem guides his coaching style. He claimed he has neither sent nor read an e-mail in his life. When the NCAA imposed legislation that limited coaches sending text messages to recruits, he was baffled.
I thought it was tech messagingT-E-C-H, Paterno told the New York Times.
Paterno knew how to use the phone, and one particular day the lack of a playoff so aggrieved him that he called Delany. Paterno didnt hold back. The Cartel can make anything happen in college football, and even Paterno, a man who loathes change, understood college football needed it. Delany told Paterno the university presidents with the power to change the system were pro-BCS. Paterno insisted the presidents would follow wherever Delany led. Delany didnt budge. The call ended without resolution. Nothing would change.
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