I’m reading Death to the BCS, an excellent book about the truth behind the Bowl Championship Series written by Dan Wetzel, Josh Peter and Jeff Passan. It’s an eye-opening read about how the bowls are fleecing colleges under the guise of non-profit (or charity) status. I really can’t recommend the book enough.

Here’s an excerpt about how the BCS keeps small bowls alive:

Know this about the bowl system: It is not subject to a free market, and this is where the future of the smaller bowls comes into play. If left alone, the minor bowls would collapse, and they would collapse spectacularly.

The BCS operates much like a government, offering a form of welfare to ensure the survival of small bowls. Industry insiders estimate just fourteen of the thirty-five current bowl games are self-sufficient. The rest profit from a system that takes money from universities and guides it into the pockets of bowl operators.

It’s more shell game than bowl game. Take Minnesota, which agreed to buy 10,500 full-price tickets to the 2008 Insight Bowl in Tempe, Arizona, according to records the school filed with the NCAA. When Minnesota sold only 1,512, it incurred a $434, 340 loss on tickets alone. It spent an additional $1.2 million on travel costs and other expenses. In the end, it cost Minnesota $1.7 million to collect the bowl’s $1.2 million payout. In a vacuum, Minnesota’s bowl experience would have been at least a half-million-dollar financial drain.

Power conference teams are willing to lose money on smaller bowls because their league peers cover the losses by participating in BCS games with $19.8 million payouts. The Big Ten pooled its bowl payout money and cut Minnesota a check that covered nearly all of its expenses.

Meanwhile, the Insight Bowl enjoyed its guaranteed ticket revenue. Despite close to 25,000 empty seats, it turned nearly a $1 million profit, according to tax records. In essence, the Rose Bowl funded the Insight Bowl. This is how the system works. As long as the Big Ten agrees to an arrangement that cuts into its big-game profits, small games will go on forever. If the Insight Bowl operated in a real marketplace, Minnesota wouldn’t play in a game that required it to pay its own way for nearly a week or buy full-price tickets it can’t sell. In 2009, the bowl drew an anemic 0.4 television rating. Left to make an honest living, the Insight Bowl would likely wither and die.

This doesn’t bother the Cartel [Ed note: This is the book's term for the people that run the BCS.]. Actually, quite the opposite. It keeps adding games that can’t stand on their own. Maybe it’s because athletic directors receive bonuses for bowl appearances. Or because coaches use bowl appearances to fetch contract extensions. Or because conference commissioners push their salaries into the multimillions by citing, among other things, how many of their teams participated in a bowl. Or because none of the suits want to give up the lavish lifestyle provided by bowls: the dinners and the drinks, the golf outings, and the entertainment.

“A few years ago, our ADs came to me and said, ‘You’ve got to start some bowl games,’” [Mountain West Conference commissioner Craig] Thompson said. “I said, ‘You’re going to lose money.’ They said, ‘I don’t care.’”

This is just one example of how the current system is siphoning money from colleges and universities (an expense which no doubt gets passed on to parents/boosters in the form of tuition and/or ticket hikes) in order to prop up a bowl that has no business being in business.

Pick up your copy of Death to the BCS today (Amazon, eBay). It’s truly an eye-opening read. I wish we could send a copy to the President of every Division I institution that has a football team. Maybe then something would change.

Bill Hancock seems like a nice enough guy but he’s delusional if he thinks that this past bowl season was a rousing success and that it proved that there’s no need for a playoff.

First and foremost, that title game was terrible. It may have had an exciting finish but a great game it was not.

Two of the most explosive offenses in the nation were on display Monday night and yet, you couldn’t have asked for worse field conditions. This should have been the most entertaining game of the season but from the opening kickoff, players resembled hockey players sliding on a sheet of ice. Neither team could catch their footing, which is probably why the combined score totaled only 41 points (or 31 fewer points than what Vegas installed for the over/under). How does this happen in an indoor stadium when the grass can easily be maintained?

Granted, it’s not the BCS’ fault that the game was rather lousy on a whole. Even if there were a playoff, there would be no guarantee that all the games would be exciting. But at the very least, the teams would be playing for something every week.

The matchup between Auburn and Oregon was dead on, but the BCS largely struck out with its other games. They made Stanford fly cross-country just to crush an overmatched Virginia Tech team and there’s no reason to relive the Oklahoma-UConn debacle.

The Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl were both highly entertaining – I’ll give the BCS that. But why must there be a long delay between the BCS bowl games and the championship? And for the love of college football, why were the Go Daddy.com Bowl, the Cotton Bowl, the BBVA Compass Bowl and the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl shown as a lead up to the national title game? I felt bad for the kids who played in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl because nobody cared by that point. They made those poor kids play on Sunday night following four NFL playoff games – only action junkies tuned into that one.

The five BCS games should all be shown in succession. The Rose Bowl is on New Year’s Day, while the Fiesta Bowl is shown on New Year’s night. The Orange Bowl and Sugar Bowl can take turns rotating between Monday and Tuesday following the final week of the NFL.

Finally, on Thursday, the BCS should have its title game. Doesn’t that make more sense instead of having five meaningless bowls leading up to the NC? I actually don’t mind that there are 35 bowl games because I love football and would watch a simulated Tecmo Football video game right now. But why not save your best games for last?

I can’t understand how the BCS can actually believe that this system is better than having a playoff. They say that this is better for the students but how? How is it better for the students that the bowl season lasts six weeks when a playoff could be wrapped up in a shorter period of time? How was it better for the student athletes at Boston College and Nevada to wait six weeks to play in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl at 9:00PM ET on a Sunday night before the national title game?

This isn’t meant to be a dig at the players, by the way. They work hard and they deserve to be on ESPN for whatever bowl game they play in. What I’m saying is they deserve to play in a playoff tournament that would bring out the natural excitement that surrounds college football. What I’m saying is: They deserve more.

This bowl season was not a success. I don’t care how much guys like Hancock spin it.

Want more proof that the current bowl system is crap in college football? Take a look at the scores from bowl games so far:

Wyoming 35, Fresno State 28 OT.
Rutgers 45, Central Florida 24.
Middle Tennessee State 42, Southern Miss 32.
BYU 44, Oregon State 20.
Utah 37, California 27.

Outside of Wyoming’s thriller over Fresno State, all of these bowl games have been laughers and not worth watching deep into the second half. If you’ve turned on any of these games in the third quarter, you’ve already missed everything worthy of tuning into.

Before anyone points this out, I get that none of the marquee bowl games have kicked off yet. And I also get that the BCS system only cares about its five games and furthermore, only really cares about the national championship.

But isn’t that reason enough to hate the BCS? They’re basically admitting that out of 34 bowl games, only one really matters. If there were a playoff, every single game would have meaning. Instead, we have 33 fluff bowls that don’t mean anything and worse yet, they’re all terrible games. Outside of the Wyoming-Fresno matchup, every bowl thus far has featured one team that is excited to play and one that can’t wait to get back on the bus to go home.

The system sucks and so do these bowl games so far. Sorry, I don’t mean to take away from Rutgers, Middle Tennessee State, BYU and Utah’s wins, but as a fan I couldn’t be more disappointed and the worst part is, this is exactly what I expected. Some will say, “Well then just don’t watch the early games” but that’s not the point – I want to watch as much college football as I can before the season is over for seven months. I just don’t want these meaningless drivel.

Thanks, BCS.

Photo from fOTOGLIF
]]> http://www.scoresreport.com/2009/12/24/thanks-for-these-early-bowl-games-bcs/feed/ 0 http://www.scoresreport.com/2009/07/03/new-bcs-committee-chief-rips-playoff-idea/ http://www.scoresreport.com/2009/07/03/new-bcs-committee-chief-rips-playoff-idea/#comments Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:20:45 +0000 Anthony Stalter http://www.scoresreport.com/?p=20906

The Nebraska State Paper.com sat down this week with University of Nebraska-Lincoln chancellor Harvey Perlman, who was recently appointed as chairman of the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee, which ultimately decides how the BCS is set up on a year basis.

So in other words, if college football were to ever have a playoff, this is the man who would give it the green light to happen. And considering he crapped all over the idea in the interview, it looks like we fans will be waiting a long time for BCS to adopt a playoff system.

Why is a playoff not a viable alternative? Is it because it would cut too many teams out of postseason play?

It would diminish the bowl structure and it would reduce the number of opportunities for student-athletes to play in the postseason and that’s not a good thing. If you look at college football now, it’s the greatest sporting event spread over September, October, November, December and a little bit of January that the country has. A playoff would seriously diminish the regular season, as it has in college basketball.

I don’t think it’s good for college football, I don’t think it’s good for student-athletes and I don’t think it’s good for fans. I don’t see fans travelling around the country three weeks in succession between December and January following their team. So you’re either going to have to play at home sites – which I’m sure everybody will want to play in Nebraska in December and January – or you’re gonna have to travel, which means that bowls will cease being intercollegiate events, but will become corporate events, where everybody in, you name the city, will be there except the fans of the teams.

This isn’t basketball. This isn’t March Madness. Football’s a different game, different environment. We have different traditions. It’s hard to see why a playoff is a good idea.

A playoff would diminish the bowl structure? How ironic, Harvey – because the bowl structure diminishes the college football season.

This whole notion that a playoff system would diminish the regular season is absolutely ridiculous and is the worst argument that BCS-supporters have made to date. Is the NFL regular season diminished by a playoff? Hell no. So why would a playoff diminish the college football season? Teams still have to fight to get into the playoffs, making every week just as exciting as it has ever been.

Sure, nobody is interested in Bengals-Browns in Week 17, but that’s unavoidable. Nobody cares about Washington-Washington State when both teams are lousy either. Whether there’s a playoff format in place or not, there are going to be bad games on the schedule.

The traveling argument makes sense, but if they regionalized the games as best as they can, fans will still travel to see their favorite teams. Hell, look at how Pittsburgh Steeler fans; there are often more Steeler fans in opposing stadiums than there are fans of that city’s team. Granted, it’s a little different when we’re talking about poor college students compared to adults with jobs, but the students would still find a way to pack the stadiums.

But I digress. Perlman has already made up his foolish mind and we’ll once again be where we always are come December and January – frustrated and wanting more. The BCS is a joke, the arguments for it are a joke, and the people that are running it are a joke.

Remember Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Texas? He’s the congressman who wants to see college football adopt a playoff system and who compared the BCS to communism.

Barton is making headlines again as he plans to investigate testimony from Alamo Bowl executive director Derrick Fox made at this month’s BCS subcommittee hearing in which Fox claimed that millions of dollars are donated to local charities thanks to the revenue generated by bowl games.

Fox, while representing all 34 bowl games during his appearance on Capitol Hill on May 1, claimed in his argument against a playoff that “almost all the postseason bowl games are put on by charitable groups” and “local charities receive tens of millions of dollars every year.”

In fact, 10 bowl games are privately owned and one is run by a branch of a local government. The remaining 23 games enjoy tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service, but combined to give just $3.2 million to local charities on $186.3 million in revenue according to their most recent federal tax records and interviews with individual bowl executives.

“That doesn’t seem like something that’s really geared toward giving to charity, does it?” said Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) after being presented with Yahoo! Sports’ findings.

“It’s perjury if it’s knowingly said,” Barton said of the sworn testimony, which he called “misleading.” “It’s also contempt of Congress. You’ve got to give [him] some sort of due process, but ultimately the remedy is to hold [him] in contempt of Congress on the House floor or send it to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution of perjury under oath.”

Barton, the ranking Republican on the subcommittee and a playoff proponent, did caution that in today’s political climate there is no certainty that charges of perjury or contempt would be filed even if the investigation found wrongdoing.

Fox said in a written statement the “tens of millions of dollars” testimony was “a good faith estimate based on information initially supplied by the FBA [Football Bowl Association].”

Yet Bruce Binkowski of the FBA said the organization doesn’t compile such figures and in literature doesn’t assign a dollar amount to the bowls’ charitable donations because “we just don’t know.”

As Barton stated, perjury charges may never come in light of Fox’s statements, but it is interesting that the main argument made for keeping the current non-playoff system in place is an outright lie. If you read the entire article, it notes that Fox and ACC commissioner and BCS coordinator John Swofford stated several times during the subcommittee hearing that donations to local charities and economic impact on host cities are the two main reasons of why bowl games must be saved at all costs. Yet there doesn’t appear to be any evidence that the local charities receive “tens of millions of dollars every year” from the BCS, so either Fox and Swofford fabricated those statements or they flat out lied in effort to keep the current college football format in place.

If the BCS did generate millions of dollars for charities every year, then a case could truly be made that college football is better off without a playoff system. (Although if bowl games generated money for charities, I don’t see why a playoff system couldn’t.) But again, there isn’t any evidence that that is indeed the case and therefore Fox and Swofford have some explaining to do.

Hopefully this is just the start of the BCS’ unraveling.

com-mu-nism
–noun
1. a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state.

2. (often initial capital letter ) a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party.

If the above definition sounds familiar, Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Texas says that it’s probably because you’ve been watching college football and are familiar with the BCS.

A congressman who wants to see college football adopt a playoff system is comparing the Bowl Championship Series to communism.

Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Texas said Friday that efforts to tinker with the BCS are bound to fail. He told a House hearing that the BCS is like communism and can’t be fixed.

Barton has introduced legislation that would prevent the NCAA from labeling a game a national championship unless it’s the outcome of a playoff system.

The coordinator of the Bowl Championship Series told the panel that a playoff system would threaten the existence of celebrated bowl games. Fans, President Barack Obama and some lawmakers favor a playoff system.

While I agree that there is a massive need for a playoff to be implemented into college football, I wouldn’t go as far to compare the BCS to communism. Fascism? Maybe. Communism? Not so much.

Does anyone else find it ironic that Barton is a Republican representative of Texas and is comparing the BCS to communism after the Long Horns didn’t get a shot to play for the national championship last year?

8. The BCS is an “unfair” system. Want to talk “unfair”? How about the Patriots — who finished with 11 wins — sitting home in January while the 8-8 Chargers, 9-6-1 Eagles, and 9-7 Arizona Cardinals all play in the postseason. My guy Kevin Hench can talk (er, whine, kick, and scream) about this far more passionately, but in the same year everyone cried about the BCS, the NFL’s postseason system left an 11-5 team out in the cold. The Texas Longhorns weren’t the only ones who got a raw deal this year.

The Texas Longhorns weren’t the only ones who got a raw deal this year.

No sh*t – so were the Utah Utes.

Yeah, the Patriots were jobbed big-time this year and the Browns were screwed last year. But those are just two teams – one team per season – over the past two seasons. The BCS continuously bends multiple teams over on a yearly basis and people still defend it.

Schrager’s comparison is freaking laughable and when you consider the Chargers made it to the divisional round, the Eagles made it to the NFC Championship and the Cardinals made it to the Super Bowl, it weakens his point even more.