Hot Topic: The BCS

On Friday, ESPN Radio informed me that Utah's congressman, Sen. Orrin Hatch, took the floor at a Judiciary Committee hearing to express his discontent with the current Bowl Championship Series format that college football has used to determine which teams are worthy to play in the National Championship. I love college football so I thought this would be a great topic for a slightly opinionated post. An unnamed auther in Charleston S.C.'s The Courier and Post wrote an article regarding Sen. Hatch's activities. In the article, the author's point is that Sen. Hatch is going against his "limited goverment" philosophy by requesting congress to intervene on the injustice of the BCS system (Unknown Author, The Courier and Post). For this post, I could care less about Sen. Hatch flip-flopping on his political stance on goverment involvement. When it comes to the BCS, politics, and the Mountain West Conference, however, I tend to have an opinion. First, get over the fact that congress needs to get involved with the BCS. When money is involved, congress gets involved and the fact of the matter is that the BCS is a cash cow reaching into the billions of dollars. When a school or state is given no fair chance to get their hands on national championship revenue, they're going to cry foul and talk to their congressman.

Ok, enough political talk. Let's talk football. One argument that the MWC shouldn't be a BCS conference is because it's not tough enough week in and week out like the SEC. Ok, fair point. I can fully admit the MWC is not as competitive as the SEC. What about the Big Ten or the Pac Ten? You can't honestly tell me that the MWC isn't as strong, if not stronger, than those conferences as a whole. I mean, take USC out of the Pac-10 and it's practically 1-AA football level. As far as the Big 10 goes, I'm pretty sure everyone will admit (and this is coming from somebody who roots for the Big 10 since I spent half my childhood growing up there) the conference has been weak for quite some time.

Another argument that the MWC shouldn't be a BCS conference is because the Utah Utes would have never been undefeated had they played in the SEC. True, but who said a team from the SEC needs to be undefeated to be in the National Championship? Come to think of it, even two loss teams from the SEC were given time in the National Championship talks.

Finally, here is the biggest problem I have with MWC haters. Everyone says they couldn't compete from year to year with the BCS conferences. Um, hello?? I won't even go into the fact that the MWC has a pretty decent bowl record against the bigger conferences. The argument I will present is that the MWC is doing what it's doing with lesser talent. I mean, if you were a star athlet being recruited by teams from both BCS and non-BCS schools which one would you choose? Every school in the MWC is recruiting with one hand tied behind its back. If they were made a BCS conference, think of the recruiting boost that would give them. I know one thing is for sure. Pete Carroll at USC would be crapping his pants if the MWC was a BCS conference because he would no longer OWN the ENTIRE western united states recruiting region.