Few organizations have been met with more public scorn and condemnation over the past several years than the Bowl Championship Series. In fact, I think it could be said that, on most days, even Congress has higher approval ratings.
No, not about that. (Who’s he kidding, anyway?)
This.
… there are other problems with the BCS that are less widely acknowledged, but far more damaging; namely, the means by which the BCS distributes revenue, even among equal participants in its games. Under the current BCS regime, six privileged conferences are guaranteed full shares of the BCS revenues, leaving the remaining five conferences with much smaller shares, even if one of them is fortunate enough to send a team to a BCS bowl. In fact, just last season, two nonprivileged conferences each sent a team to the BCS, yet both received only a fraction of the amounts paid to their counterparts from the privileged conferences. Keep in mind, we’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
On this count, Utahns have even more reason to cry foul on the BCS. It is important to remember that this money is divided among colleges and universities, all of whom use the funds to build facilities for student athletes, offer scholarships and fund academic programs. Yet, even though they have been competitive on the field and in the marketplace, schools from our state have been shortchanged, not due to any fault of their own, but to an inequitable system.
This arrangement is troublesome on a number of levels. First, there is a strong argument to make that the BCS violates our nation’s antitrust laws, which outlaw contracts designed to reduce market competition. In addition, the BCS system clearly harms consumers throughout the country by reducing the quality of competition and throwing up roadblocks in front of potential competitors.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the BCS constitutes an arrangement among educational institutions to decide in advance which schools will benefit and which schools will be left out in the cold, regardless of the quality of their performance. We charge these same institutions with the task of preparing our young people to be active and ethical upon entering the job market. The BCS is, by its very nature, antithetical to that mission.
There’s a lot of bullshit packed in there. Competitive in the marketplace? Puh-leaze.
In comparison to all the money talk, Hatch devotes roughly one paragraph griping about competition on the field. Perhaps that will give you a sense of his priorities.
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