I guess this is what happens when you can’t get a health care bill passed.
The Obama administration is considering several steps that would review the legality of the controversial Bowl Championship Series, the Justice Department said in a letter Friday to a senator who had asked for an antitrust review.
Granted, the devil’s in the details and it seems fairly clear from the letter’s contents that the administration would prefer for someone else to tote the water on this, but any way you look at it, it appears that the D-1 college football postseason is in for some changes.
Get The Picture 
obama to orrin: shut up
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Obama picking up an issue and running with it isn’t a sure indicator of action these days. I think he has sincere feelings on this issue, and it’s a political gain too, but there’s still not enough oomph out there to get anywhere.
As we watch this develop, remember that the pursuit of perfection is the enemy of the good.
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If Indiana HS basketball used the same system as the BCS to decide who plays for the Championship, the team in “Hoosiers” would never have even played in the game. I think that the best team in the country has been locked out by the BCS at least half a dozen times since the BCS inception, going all the way back to that undefeated (12-0) Tulane team that would have kicked Tennessee’s a$$ in 1998 if given the chance. Think of how much grief (and number of times of having to hear “Rocky Top”) that would have saved everyone.
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Mayor, no offense, but that may be lamest rationale ever offered for a D-1 football playoff.
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If you did not like the “Hoosiers” reference what about “the best team in the country has been locked out by the BCS at least half a dozen times…” reference?
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By the way, you can start the locked out count with UGA 2007.
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For the last flippin’ time, UGA did not get screwed in 2007. They did not win their conference. They got embarassed in Knoxville and lost at home to a South Carolina team that turned out to be pretty damned average. Seriously, quity using UGA in 2007 as rationale that a playoff solves everything. Under most proposed playoff situations, UGA would not have gotten in the tournament because they didn’t even win their own conference. Hell, I bet you even believe the Arizona Cardinals were one of the two best teams in the NFL last year just because they almost won the tournament. Let’s completely ignore that 40 point loss they had to the Patriots like 3 weeks before the playoffs started and the fact that they only got in the playoffs because they played in the weakest division in the history of the NFL. Clearly a playoff determines the best team. No way flukey teams win in the playoffs (cough “NY Giants-2007” cough).
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I think the point is not that Georgia didn’t fall on their face with losses to UT and USCe, but that the eventual champion was only arbitrarily better.
LSU also lost two games, and through a fluke got to play in the SEC title game. Essentially, its side of the conference was worse and didn’t have as many close games.
While I agree that people who get up in arms about being screwed by the BCS that year are missing the point; namely that Georgia should never have lost to the two teams it did; there is an argument to be made based on the fact that eventual national champion was in essentially the same boat and through sheer luck got in. 2 loss LSU didn’t play a noticeably more difficult schedule than Georgia, and its losses weren’t “better” in any sense of the word. It’s the random, arbitrary nature of the BCS rules that make Georgia fans mad, I’d wager.
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Let’s set the record straight on this. In 2007 LSU lost to Arky and Ky both 8-5 teams that year. UGA beat KY handily, 24-13. UGA did lose by 21 to UT in Knoxvegas, though, and to S. Carolina 16-12 in Athens. At the time S.Carolina was a damn good team and highly ranked but injuries and lack of depth, particularly on D, got them the second half of the season (I wish we could get the scheduling changed so we could play them at the end rather than at the beginning when they are playing well). UGA was actually ahead of LSU in the polls going into the week of the SECCG. However, intense lobbying by the nattering nabobs of ESPN, Jesse Palmer and Lou Holtz, using the “UGA didn’t win their conference” mantra swayed poll voters enough to allow LSU to jump UGA in the polls and the BCS, locking UGA out of the big game. This, despite the fact that both Nebraska and Oklahoma had played in the BCSNC game previously (look it up) WITHOUT having won their conference championship. (Palmer and Holtz never bothered to mention that.) LSU handily beat Ohio State for the title. Is there anyone out there in blogland who thinks Ohio State would have beaten UGA in that game? I don’t think so. Now, if that isn’t getting screwed out of playing in the BCSNC game and being MNC I don’t know what would be. Also, to add insult to injury, UGA played LSU in Baton Rouge the following year and beat the Tigers by 2 touchdowns both teams being basically the same as the year before. This couldn’t be more clear. Screw job.
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Something else has always bothered me about 2007. UT and UGA had the same conference record in 2007 (6-2) and UT got to play in the SECCG because the first tiebreaker is head to head and they beat UGA that year. Fine. But UGA was still the co-champion of the SEC-East that year. Why do people not acknowledge that. I understand that they do not even claim it in the UGA records in Athens. It troubles me that the Dawgs were really the best team in the country that year (finished the season ranked #2, wrongfully, as said above) and got absolutely nothing out of it.Just a thought.
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“But UGA was still the co-champion of the SEC-East that year. Why do people not acknowledge that. ” – Mayor of Dawgtown
For the same reason that no one remembers that Iowa was the Big Ten co-champs the year Ohio State beat Miami for the MNC…because no one remembers or cares about the also rans.
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At least Iowa got acknowledged as Co-champ of the Big-10 that year. The UGA 2007 team got nothing-and had the best team in the country. That was the most unfair thing I think I have ever seen in sports.
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A) That’s because Iowa was co-champs of the conference, not just of a division within a conference.
B) The SEC had divisional co-champs not just in 2007, but also in 2005, 2003, 2002, 2001, 1998, 1996…you get the point. Chances are without the internet most people couldn’t come close to naming the co-divisional champs that did not play in the SECCG in those years.
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Said nattering nabob at ESPN was neither Palmer or Holtz, as I recall. It was actually Kirk Herbstreit, who began his handiwork in screwing us over even while calling the Big 12 title game that evening.
Jim
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Herbstreit and Mark May joined in but I thought the worst offenders were Palmer and Holtz, two guys with a clear conflict of interest given that Palmer played for FLA and Holtz coached at S. Carolina. Another offender was former UTk DB Charles Davis (who is now with another network I think). The whole rotten ESPN bunch was involved.
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No offense Mayor, but citing UGA beating LSU in 2008 as an indictment of the 2007 rankings doesn’t even pass the laugh test.
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What planet are you from? Whichever one (Uranus, no doubt) they must not play football there. Two teams are in the running to be picked to play in the BCSNC game. One gets picked over the other because of a poll. Ten months later they play (with basically the same personnel) and the team that didn’t get picked kicks the other team’s ass by 2 touchdowns–and you think that means nothing! I think it means 3 things: First, it means that UGA was a better team than LSU in 2007; second, it means that if LSU and UGA (2 teams with identical conference and overall regular season records) had played in the SECCG, UGA likely would have dusted LSU and been SEC champion; third, since one of the most often cited playoff formats is the “plus-one” game, had there been a “plus-one” game pitting #1 vs.#2 after the bowls were done for the 2007 season UGA would most likely have won the BCSNC in 2007. P.S. If you are going to be a shill for LSZoo change your name to Hackertiger.
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I am from Earth, where each football season is treated as a discrete trial. I am from a planet where people who cite the results of a game in a different year from the season in question are laughed at.
Maybe you should change your nomiker to Mayor of Crazytown.
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I’m not sure how you can say that about LSU. Especially when you consider that Flynn’s replacement threw two pick-sixes.
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The economy in peril, health care, millions of Americans out of work, terrorist wanting to attack us, China owning trillions of our treasuries, Haiti, elections in November, and this guy wants to involve himself into the college football playoff debate. How very un-Presidential.
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Sort of like congratulating one team as the national championship winner over another undefeated in what, 1969 or 1970? Or having staked your political career in part on having been a sports team owner?
Come on. I’m not trying to be partisan here, but there is precedent for meddling presidents, if not tons of it.
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Right on rbubp. Every year the Prez invites the MNC team to the White House for pictures, congratulations, etc. Why can’t he say he wants a real champion rather than one anointed by the media (we all know how accurate the media is).
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Dewey beats Truman!
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Because maybe, just maybe, multitasking is something that is remotely possible. I’m sure Obama himself is spending the majority of his time worrying about this, instead of how the article characterizes it as being done by the DOJ (and their one worker, I’d imagine). This is a stupid thing to get mad at Obama for (not that I’d wager partisan conservative people have any problem with that).
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The simple reason is the guy needs some good pub and he is desparately flailing for something, anything, that he can line up with the majority in support of. Health Care, PrezBO’s hallmark issue, is opposed by +60% of the people and even his lapdog Congress is putting up resistance. His Party just lost the governorship and a senate seat in two of the bluest states in the country…dems are dropping out of the elections in November left and right. Lose enough of those seats and the Great Veer Left gets halted in its tracks.
PrezBO needs an issue that he can take to all of those people that he needs votes from in November…you know, the ones that he thinks aren’t smart enough to realize that his way is the best way. The ones that ‘cling to their guns and God’. Give them a football playoff and they just might like him…heck, they might even think they get to have a beer in the backyard of the White House.
It’s nothing more than grandstanding and desparation.
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Obama already got some good pub yesterday by kicking the shit out of the House Republicans at their ‘retreat’ when they tried to baffle him by their not so deft use of their talking point questions to him.
That will probably be the last time they try to give him shit to his face in a Q and A session instead of their usual grandstanding and behind his back desperation shots at him…
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/1/30/831961/-OBAMA-EATS-REPUBLICANS-LUNCH
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Did you just really link to the Daily Kos?? Seriously, dude. Why not just call all Republicans
‘nazis’ and crown yourself the “The Wiz” because nobody can beat you!!!
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+1 for what is your shortest post in memory.
-1 for linking to the Kos without trying to be ironic.
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Maybe it’s just me, but if you’re going to accuse someone of grandstanding, shouldn’t that person be the one actually doing the grandstanding? 😉
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Just so I have this clear…”Bush” and “Bush Administration”; “Reagan” and “Reagan Adminstration” are interchangeable but when it is “Obama” and “Obama Administration” the public has to be very specific.
Okay, got it…thanks for cueing us into the different rules depending upon political affiliation.
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Aren’t you the guy who posted this?
So help me out here – are both Hatch and Obama grandstanding? Or are they both being bipartisan statesmen because that’s the way politics works? 😉
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+1.Gotcha.
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He’s doing it for the pub, which, by the way, is the same reason Hatch and Barton are doing it. None of them think it’s going to actually result in anything tangible happening. The level of outrage, however, shocking tends to rise and fall with whether the person addressing the issue is a Democrat or Republican. Here’s a novel thought: they’re all FOS with respect to particular issues.
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So, even if they succeed in declaring the BCS as a violation of antitrust, what happens?
Since the NCAA lost its case in the Supreme Court over broadcast rights, it cannot intervene.
Each school and conference would then have the right to negotiate its own deal… which is exactly why the conferences formed the first Alliance anyway… to negotiate on its member schools behalf.
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