Football Playoff Voted Out Of Subcommittee

Rep. "Smokey" Joe Barton (R-Texas) said he would be trying to get a college Division I football playoff legislated by Congress, since the colleges themselves and the major bowl refuse to do it. (They are, of course, trying to protect their own lucrative paydays.) Now it looks like Barton wasn't joking.

The bill, authored by Barton, would prevent any game being billed as a "national championship" game, unless that game was the result of an actual college playoff (like football playoffs done by smaller colleges in other divisions).

Barton's bill was voted out of a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on a voice vote. There was only one audible "no" vote. The "no" vote was from Rep. John Barrow (D-Georgia), who is probably shilling for the Southeastern conference which has a lucrative tie with the current BCS system.

Personally I like Barton's bill, but I doubt it has much of a chance to pass. There are too many in Congress like Barrow, who are either alumni of or have other ties to the large BCS conferences. Like the colleges, Congress has far less interest in fairness than in power and money.

The large colleges had once argued that a playoff system would keep students out of class too much, but the small college playoffs shows that to not be true. They don't refuse to do it out of a regard for the players (or the fans), but purely because of greed. The bowls and large college conferences make a ton of money out of the bowl games (even many six or seven win teams who really don't deserve to be in a bowl game).

Certain conferences have an automatic entrance to the biggest bowls (the BCS bowls) and therefore access to a possible national championship bid, while other conferences never get their chance. Everybody knows the current BCS system is unfair, but the powers-that-be are making too much money to care.

Take this year for example. While two undefeated colleges are playing for the national championship (Alabama and Texas), three other undefeated teams were not given the chance to play for a championship (TCU, Cincinnati and Boise State). Who's to say that one of those teams couldn't beat the winner of Alabama-Texas? And we'll never know, because they weren't given the chance.