BCS vs Washington and what it could mean to UNC

Well football fans we might just have a new system in place soon enough, thanks to the Senate Judiciary’s antitrust subcommittee, or more specifically, thanks to Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). It seems that Senator Hatch, along with his counterpart Senator Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.), who are the top Republican and Democrat on the antitrust subcomiittee, are ready to go after the one thing that all fans of college football hate, the Bowl Championship Series. Here is a small paragraph about what the two Senators think of the BCS:

“The BCS system leaves nearly half of all the teams in college football at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to qualifying for the millions of dollars paid out every year,”

Up to that point, nothing earthshattering as we don’t need to be in Washington to figure that one out. We all knew this for a long time, the BCS is the college football equivalent of the “rich get richer”, and unfortunately there isn’t many rich, but they are sure getting richer. Enron anyone? But then, when we think that this is another attempt by the big brass in the Capital to try and push around college football with mere words here comes the sentence that might have all the fan base of the non BCS teams applauding:

“The subcommittee will hold hearings to investigate these issues.”

And as you attempt to re read that, here comes another little hit against the big, bad six conferences:

“Senator Hatch will introduce legislation to rectify this situation.”

Are you feeling that this is the Major League Baseball hearings all over again? Maybe, maybe not, but you have to believe that all those schools that each year are going after the big time money that going to the BCS bowls brings, might just be getting a bit worried. Actually, with the way that college football has always had the big payouts in the big bowl games, they might be really worried! But this is a North Carolina blog, so what could this do to the Tar Heel football program?
 
In the long run all big programs, or let’s say programs in the BCS conference, might take a hit, because the big bucks behind the BCS might just be gone. Unlike MLB this fight with the BCS system is going to be a big time hit for college sports, because while college football is going to be fighting this, they will then have to fight to keep all their sponsors even without the attraction of the major bowls. Baseball was never in danger of losing anything, except its pride, when it went to Washington. College football risks to lose a lot more, or better said, a lot more money than baseball did with this move by the antitrust subcommittee.
 
Now, people will say as long as the games are there why would the sponsorship leave? To answer that is pretty simple, look at the economy and look at March Madness, going on right now. We all love the cinderellas as fans, but CBS loves the chalk, because in round three and four the big time names bring in the ratings and the money, cinderellas just bring on a lot of talk around the water cooler but not many people to the television. But, again, for a team like North Carolina what would it mean? Maybe nothing, maybe a lot, it would all depend on the way the BCS would then be rebuilt.
 
My theory is that if this happened the college football people would go from a BCS system to a “free for all” college playoff system, meaning that the winners of the conferences and some at large teams would meet up in a 16 team playoff. Would that help out the smaller conferences? I would say so, because if they are playing well and are close to going into the five BCS games, you know they will definitely be part of a sixteen team playoff race. On the other hand, the one thing that would scare me out of all of this is that the rules become so strict and complicated that just one squad from the major conferences makes it in, making it very hard for very good teams to show off their talent in the post season. That is where I see the problem for North Carolina when it comes to this.
 
UNC is definitely on its way up in the Atlantic Coast Conference, no doubt about it. However, with a playoff system that would focus on having one team per conference it would become very tough for Carolina to make it to the top and break out as the team to beat in the conference. Just like the “one and done” rule in college basketball is killing the mid majors, this rule might hurt the teams in the BCS conferences that are close to the top, but not there yet. And just like you are going to see mid-majors fall lower and lower in the years to come when it comes to March Madness, you are going to see the teams that are set to be the top of their conference in the gridiron become stronger and stronger, making it harder and harder to topple them off as king of the hill.
 
Even with a playoff system that would give a couple of extra teams besides the top one a chance to get into it you would have to believe that the SEC, the Big XII and the Big Ten would have a better chance to have a second squad in before the ACC did. So, again, while I do not like the BCS system, the fact that many teams go to bowl games at this point helps UNC. Going to a primary system of playoffs and then a secondary amount of bowl games might hurt the Tar Heels when it’s all said and done. So, while we wait for Goverment to “fix” this let’s just hope that the teams like UNC do not get hurt in the process.

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