No more promise are to be made of this being the 'last' or 'next to last' article on the BCS. There is just too much content to ignore the issue. Now I could just write a huge piece filled with thousands of words about the hearings.
This BCS talk has some legs still and hopefully this will, maybe, probably not be the last article on the BCS this off season.
The first news, which really was no surprise is that the Mountain West finally signed the new BCS deal. This was going to happen, because the league was no way to lose the BCS money or exposure if one of the MWC schools make it to the BCS.
Berry Tremmel, The Oklahoman: Being from Oklahoma Berry is quite objective, which is fresh when reading others work from people who write about BCS leagues or in that region.
This article makes good points with how the BCS has given more access to big money games, but is still unfair:
"This was a Utah pity party, nothing more. I'm a longtime supporter of the Mountain West Conference. I advocate an automatic BCS berth for the Mountain West, and I annually rip the NCAA basketball committee for short-changing the mid-majors.
"I'm not even anti-playoff, so long as it's an 11-team playoff that includes all the conference champions. But Congress can't fix anything, and the Mountain West has limited credibility in this case."
Credibility is what the MWC needs, which is why they need to try to continue on their progress from last year
Insider Higher Ed: To some extent the BCS hearings were a big show for Orrin Hatch to try to prove that Utah and the non-BCS do not have the same access:
"In front of a standing-room-only audience - which clearly owed much of its size to the presence of more than a few sports-crazed Congressional interns - a pair of university presidents and antitrust lawyers debated the merits and legality of the Bowl Championship Series."
This hearing was a lot about anti-trust and ethics, as well as people saying 'not to offend anyone.' This hearing accomplished nothing and was a big gran stand.
Dana Milbank The Washington Post: Milbank dives into the BCS hearings and goes in the angle of antitrust:
"In theory, an antitrust case could be made that the six athletic conferences that dominate the BCS have an unfair advantage over the five other conferences, which are not traditional football powerhouses.
But the argument has been largely confined to bars and sports pages, because nobody seems terribly eager to fight it out in court."
This is the best way to bust up the BCS because the money distribution is not fair when a non-BCS team makes it to a BCS game. However Hatch did not go in that direction, and instead said that because of the league Utah is in they never had a chance at a title.
Matt Hinton, Dr. Saturday: The big point in the hearings was when Harvey Perlman said that if Utah played Nebraska's schedule. Perlman made it seemed like it was oh so simple.
Not really since Utah has only four games to beef up their schedule, and getting teams four teams in the top 25 is impossible.
Here is what The Doc had to say on this:
Replace "the schedule Nebraska played" with "the schedule Florida played" or "the schedule Oklahoma played" or "the schedule [insert powerhouse] played"; Nebraska, specifically, is not important here. (A good thing for Perlman, because the Huskers haven't beaten a ranked team since 2001.)
What is important is that of course Utah could not have played the schedule Nebraska (or Florida or Oklahoma) played. It's literally not possible on multiple levels under the current system, which is precisely the issue Hatch and his BCS-hating colleagues are attacking here.
Even though if Harvey Perlman did his homework, the Utah schedule was rated as the 56th and only 18 spots behind Nebraska. So the difference is not there.
Overall there is not much difference in was written about, and the media outside of Utah have been all over these BCS hearings.
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