Well, he’s gone and done it: Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff has announced he’s running for the U.S. Senate.
Let’s skip past the idea of whether we want a Senator who’s enamored of a loon like Glenn Beck, and check out a couple of quotes from the man who would be Senator. Speaking of his incumbent opponent, Shurtleff said this:
“Instead of promoting principles of individual responsibility, he let us down and looked upon government as the solution,” Shurtleff complained.
Hell, yeah! Bad dog! Get down, government!
Er… uh, except when the BCS isn’t spreading the wealth the way this politician would like. Because he’s ready to bring that antitrust hammer down, sucka! Up against the wall, greedheads!
… The BCS system involves millions of dollars a year of potential revenue to these institutions that could help replace dwindling taxpayer generated general fund monies. For the 2007-2008 bowl season, the BCS Championship Series distributed about $143 million in gross income for the twelve conferences participating in the BCS System. Two million dollars went to other miscellaneous distributees. Of that $143 million in gross income, 88% went to members of the six conferences with preferred eligibility to the Championship Series Bowls (with about 65 schools participating) and 12% went to six conferences with non-preferential eligibility (with about 54 schools participating). A similar split in the distribution of Bowl Championship Series gross income occurred in prior years. Additionally, the right of preferred entrance teams to act as the host venues for bowl games generates, according to the BCS, about $1.2 billion in secondary income benefits.
Damn the BCS’ individual responsibility, I say! Full speed ahead! A little socialism never hurt college football, right?
It’s getting easier to be a politician these days, I think. These guys don’t even bother to keep their stories straight anymore.
Get The Picture 
Newsflash – those ‘preferred eligibility’ (aka, BCS) schools that receive 88% of the $143 million generate at least 88% of that $143 million.
Let’s start with attendance records: http://web1.ncaa.org/d1mfb/2007/Internet/team/IA_team.pdf
Broken down, BCS schools account for 79% of the 34,500,000 fans that attend college football games, while non-BCS schools account for 21%. If we’re factoring in ticket prices to figure out revenue, it’s no stretch to say that on the average, tickets to BCS games are a lot more expensive than tickets to non-BCS games. That means the BCS schools’ contribution to the overall revenue is well over 79%.
Add in television contracts, merchandise, fan tourism money, and all else, the BCS schools bring in as much money as they get.
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Shurtleff (Opportunist – Utah) talks to his hero, Glenn Beck (Unstable – TV Land) and realizes that Glenn not only doesn’t what a football looks like, he can’t throw one either. Shurtleff (Opportunist – Utah) quickly cuts overhead, fires speechwriter, finding it cheaper to fire recycled Ronald Reagan lines at opponent.
Joe Barton (Communist – Texas), upon hearing that Shurtleff has rolled out the Ronald Reagan artillery, dusted it off and is firing away with it, has publicist agent frantically working on ways to get Joe Barton’s name back out there. College football has been very very good to Joe Barton and Joe Barton knows Shurtleff is taking the BCS ball that Joe Barton fumbled and is sprinting toward a higher position in the Multimillionaires Club, The U.S. Senate. Joe Barton knows that’s a good place for an uber-capitalist to be and he, for the good of Texas, just can’t allow that to happen because it was Joe Barton’s BCS ball in the first place.
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Aw, now, don’t get on ole Glenn.
He just loves this country SO much!
(cue crocodile tears)
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[Glenn Beck pauses, stares into camera meaningfully, eyes tear up]
“If loving my country makes a loon, sir, then I’ll gladly call myself a loon. If only we all could be loons.”
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