Senator Hatch pens another letter.
Regardless of your ideological bent, don’t you find it a little brazen to hear Hatch ask a favor (and that’s what this is, when you get down to it) from the man with whom he’s devoted the last twelve months obstructing his political goals at pretty much every turn?
Get The Picture 
Yep … pretty damned brazen.
But, did Sessions or Shelby (was he in office by then?) do the same in ’04?
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Damn, I’m a geek.
Sessions, Shelby, US Senate, Auburn 2004.
Sorry.
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Wow. The comments there are frightening. Are people really that stupid? Have I led a sheltered life?
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I thought you guys (Senator I’m including you) were UGA fans. Why would you ever defend the BCS after what happened to UGA in 2007? Yes the SEC is a BCS conference. Yes the last 4 BCSNC games have been won by SEC schools. Has UGA been allowed to play in a BCSNC game? No! You see, all teams in BCS conferences are equal–just some are more equal than others. The more equal in the SEC are FLA, LSU and BAMA. The less equal are UGA and Auburn. UT is a neutral because they are not part of the favored crowd but they don’t get screwed over either like we do. The Dawgs have been victimized just as much as Boise State and Utah just not as openly and obviously. F#ck the BCS. Way to go Orrin, you got my vote.
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Ouch. When we beat the Rainbow Warriors of Hawai’i (man, that video from Carl of Aqua Teen Hunger Force is still with me and is STILL hilarious), we should have been in the title game, no doubt. However, it’s more our fault than anyone else’s. While I agree passing us over for LSU was bullshit, if we had scored 1 TD against South Carolina? We’re in. If we hadn’t crapped our pants in Knoxville? We’re in. If any one of 3 kickers for opponents of Tennessee makes a kick that year, we’re in. We had our chances, and mainly, we screwed ourselves.
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Once you lose by a million points, or whatever it was up in Knoxville, I think you lose your right to say that you “should” be in a national championship contest. When you factor in not scoring a touchdown against South Carolina, I think it’s fair to say that national pundits would probably still be lifting up Georgia as an example of what’s wrong with the BCS if we had been invited to the BCS title game over an SEC Champion LSU team. Fact is, we COULD have ended up there if certain things had worked out in our favor. They didn’t. And when we didn’t force the issue by winning all of our games, or at least not losing any in embarrassing fashion… well… you didn’t hear me shouting afterwards.
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Mayor, it’s not about defending the BCS.
Put it this way: how excited would you be about Obama and Hatch getting together to fashion a new college football postseason?
I thought so. 😉
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Only a person with little knowledge of how politics actually works, and several truckloads worth of naivite, would be surprised at Hatch and Obama working together on something that they have both independently stated they supported (a playoff).
Whenever the winds changes direction rapidly in some squalid corner of the world we are treated to GHW Bush & Clinton commercials…and “No Child Left Behind” was the work product of GW Bush and Ted Kennedy. The examples are so numerous that the English language actually has a word to describe such events in political affairs. It’s called “bipartisan”.
Try not to be shocked next time you see an example.
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Gosh, consider me put in my place!
Seriously, the examples you give – humanitarian issues and major legislation – are somewhat less trivial than a football playoff, doncha think?
And as for your mention of the word “bipartisan”, it’s not me that needs a refresher in the meaning of the word. It’s Senator Hatch’s party.
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The examples: So, what…You don’t think that politicians trade favors with those they are in disagreement with on other political issues on things like office locations, jobs for staffers, appointments for relatives, etc. etc…all of which amount to next to nothing compared to the hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in revenue that the BCS/college football bowl games generates.
Hatch’s request is far, far from ‘brazen’…it’s move like ‘business as usual’.
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Nope. It’s grandstanding.
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In Washington, “Grandstanding” is “Business as Usual”
But that may come as a surprise to people that think Hillary really is a Yankees fan.
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When the Democrats define bipartisanship as smiling while they screw you, consider me happy that Republicans haven’t been more “bipartisan” during the last year.
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Yeah, I don’t exactly see how UGA was harmed by the BCS in 2007. Don’t get pantsed in Knoxville and score an offensive TD against South Carolina. Simple as that.
As the Senator says, it’s not about defending the BCS. It’s about the fact that guys like Orrin Hatch and Joe Barton don’t care about creating an equitable and fair college post-season as much as they do stirring controversy in order to get a few more voters in their constituency come election time.
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Well I ain’t runnin’ for anything (being Mayor for Life) so I don’t need votes. I say let’s have a playoff so we have a real champion in D-1A instead of the PR BS we have now. As I recall LSU lost 2 games in 07′ and were written off during the season because of the losses and the way they lost, too. The following season UGA beat their collective asses soundly in the 4th game of the season (so much for the theory that LSU was so superior to UGA and deserved to go to the Big Game more than we did). Georgia was clearly better than LSU that season and got screwed out of playing in the BCSNC game. Is there anyone out there in blogland who with a straight face who will say if UGA got to play in the BCSNC game that year that the Dawgs would have lost to the vaunted Buckeyes? I think not. We got f#cked out of the National Championship that year, plain and simple. It’s past time for UGA to quit taking sh!t from the BCS. Way past time. I’m surprised at some of you for continuing to lay prostrate on the ground and let these effete twerps walk all over our team without protest. Shame on you!
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When the “logic” of the pro-playoff crowd includes games played in seasons other than the season in question, then I am glad to be counted in opposition.
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Champions will be “chosen on the field” instead of in “pre-arranged agreements.”
I keep looking at that sentence and trying to think of something to say. I can’t. But I know there’s something wrong with it.
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Probably something along the lines of “Orin Hatch said this, so it’s got to be fundamentally flawed on some level, somewhere.”
That’s generally what I think when I read his arguments for a playoff. Which I’m for.
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Consider the source.
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Champions are chosen on the field with pre-arranged agreements. Thats what the BCS title game is.
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But to choose them on the field without pre-arranged agreements? As if everybody shows up and there is a battle royale for the national champion? In theory, a playoff is the same.
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Who are the lobbyists that keep paying Hatch to spew his crap?
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Those jerks in Washington can’t get it right. They start screwing with college football, and they will screw it up too.
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Somebody beat Senator Hatch to the Idea. There’s a post here from Jan. 6 linking to the column.
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I’m not sure he actually thinks it’s going to happen, certainly not with his relationship with Obama. And, also because it’s just freaking stupid.
No, Hatch just fired off the letter, made sure to CC it to the media so he could show his WAC buddies that he’s trying to stick up for the little guy. I have to believe that, in his heart, Hatch doesn’t believe that Boise State and Alabama deserve equal treatment. Heck, I can’t promise that Boise wouldn’t give Alabama a helluva game if they faced off. But, without meeting in a playoff, you simply can’t say that Boise’s WAC resume is equal to Alabama’s.
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Well, if we are talking about resumes being the determining factor…it seems there is a guy living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that has a very WAC-like resume and won his job because he was actually allowed to compete against the guy with the BCS-conference resume.
Funny how that works out when you actually give a person/team a chance to compete directly with their opponent..
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Weak analogy – if I were to compare John McCain to a college football entity, it would be Notre Dame. You know, institutions living off of past memories, overrated by the press, bringing in incompetent people to juice up the program and having that flop miserably in their faces.
But that’s just me. 😉
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Notre Dame…or Tennessee?
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