More GREAT NEWS from Congress: The Collegiate Sports Caucus

One member of the US House of Representatives rarely has enough pull to get anything done. If he can find a few like-minded representatives from other parts of the country and perhaps the opposing party, he might make enough noise to get legislation altered or get favors in exchange for their votes. Get enough like minded people together and form a congressional caucus, and you can start making things happen.

US Representatives Steve Cohen of Tennessee and Joe Barton of Texas have formed the Collegiate Sports Caucus on Capitol Hill, in an effort to make a playoff happen. News of the reintroduction of the College Football Playoff Act came yesterday.

But there was more to that news story than the simple introduction of a bill that seems headed for nowhere. These knuckleheads are forming a caucus. I’m sure Utah Senator Orrin Hatch approves.

From Politico:

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Members of Congress don’t win office by being ranked the top candidates by pollsters and computers, so why should the NCAA’s Division I football title be decided that way?
That’s the message Reps. Joe Barton (R-Texas) and Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) had for big-time college football on Thursday as they announced the formation of the Congressional Collegiate Sports Caucus, which they’ll chair together. And the caucus's first action is to introduce a bill calling for a playoff system in college football, similar to a 2008 Barton bill.

The two lawmakers are noted college football fans – Barton cheering for Texas A&M and Cohen an Alabama backer, showing his commitment to a playoff considering the Crimson Tide is taking on Louisiana State in the 2012 title game.

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Asked the expected question of why Congress would want to tinker with sports while there were so many pressing fiscal issues, Barton said it’s a matter of interstate commerce, with millions of dollars changing hands every year in a bowl system he believes is broken. And Cohen said he doesn’t understand why football is allowed to have an entirely different title system than every other collegiate sport.

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The “interstate commerce” clause in the US Constitution has been used by Congress throughout history to screw America through burdensome regulations that hamper free enterprise and restrict personal liberty. Now, a Republican and a Democrat (who also happens to be a Bama fan) want to use that clause to screw up college football.

Like most sane college football fans, I want a playoff to decide the national championship. But like most sane Americans, I also recognize that a federally mandated playoff would represent the single biggest cluster fuck since Roy Kramer invented the BCS.

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Great News: Congress gets bill requiring college football playoff

This is just WONDERFUL news. US Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN) has submitted a bill entitled the College Football Playoff Act.

It is identical to legislation submitted in the last Congress by Representative Joe Barton (R-TX). Barton is a cosponsor for Cohen’s bill. That bill would have  “prohibited, as an unfair and deceptive act or practice, the promotion, marketing, and advertising of any post-season NCAA Division I football game as a national championship game unless such game is the culmination of a fair and equitable playoff system.”

Anytime you hear a politician talking about making something “fair,” it’s a safe bet that whatever they’ve got in mind won’t be.

According to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service summary of the 2009 legislation, the bill

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Prohibits promoting, marketing, or advertising a post-season National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) game as a championship or national championship game (or any merchandise that refers to the game as a championship or national championship game) unless such game is the final game of a single elimination post-season playoff system for which all NCAA Division I FBS conferences and unaffiliated Division I FBS teams are eligible. Treats a violation as an unfair or deceptive act or practice under the Federal Trade Commission Act.

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What should concern fans is that Cohen (and Barton before him) plans to use the same argument for forcing college football into instituting a playoff as they did with that colossal assault on personal liberty called Healthcare Reform. If they can get away with requiring Americans to participate in a marketplace they ordinarily might choose to avoid, then they can get away with ramming an untenable, bureaucratically established playoff that lets Sun Belt, Mountain West and Middle American Conference Champions compete in the same multi-round bracketed playoff with Southeastern Conference, Big 10 and Big 12 teams.

That’s not gonna happen. If something like this passes, you’ll see the Rose Bowl married up forever with the Pac-12 and Big 10 and the Sugar Bowl return to SEC vs. at-large. Goodbye, market-induced college football championship reform.

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