Washington heavyweights join football fans in demanding a college playoff

As the New Year approaches and the college football bowl season heats up, Washington politicians and pundits are fiercely debating the way the national champion is chosen.
 
The list is chock full of big names from both parties, including President Barack Obama, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), former Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer and former Democratic strategist James Carville.
 
{mosads}The issue gained ground in Washington a year ago when Obama lent his voice to sports fans around the nation frustrated with the absence of a college football playoff and reached a fever pitch this month when a House subcommittee approved legislation that would pressure the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) to adopt one.
 
The BCS responded by hiring its own political heavyweights, including Fleisher and the lobbying firm run by former Rep. J.C. Watts (R-Okla.), who played quarterback at the University of Oklahoma.
 
Texas and Alabama will play on Jan. 7 for this year’s national championship, two of five undefeated teams ranked by the BCS.
 
Fleischer, in an interview last month with The Hill, questioned why Congress is taking time and taxpayer money to manage college football’s postseason.
 
“If the standard by which this legislation should be judged is that Congress should design postseason play then no sport is safe from Congress,” he said. “What about baseball? Why call the final game a World Series? It involves only two countries. … Do they also think they need to ask baseball to change the name of the World Series?”
 
Carville, in a radio interview with The Dan Patrick Show last month, said he backs government intervention and challenged Fleischer’s interest in football for backing the BCS’s current system of ranking teams and only letting the top two play for the championship.
 
“Ari couldn’t be a [college football] fan and defend the BCS,” Carville said. “It’s incompatible. If you love college football, you have to hate the BCS.”
 
Fleischer responded by saying Carville is having a hard time because his favorite team, Louisiana State, finished 9-3 and No. 12 in the rankings.
 
“James has long identified as someone who hates the BCS,” Fleischer said. “He’s an LSU fan, so he’s having a tough year and I don’t see any reason to make his year any tougher.”
 
But Carville is not alone. The House legislation is backed by a group of bipartisan members, many of them from districts with schools that have felt slighted over the years by the complex system of human and computer rankings. It would ban the BCS from branding and marketing a “national championship” game unless it comes as a result of a single-elimination playoff tournament, similar to the NCAA’s men’s college basketball tournament.
 
“If fans think the BCS is about picking the best team, or teams, to play in the championship, they’re wrong,” said Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), the bill’s sponsor who represents a district that includes Texas Christian University. TCU, one of the teams that went undefeated this year, was not selected to play for the national championship.
 
Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that has jurisdiction over the legislation, said his panel is “very busy” and unlikely to consider Barton’s bill.
 
But Waxman, according to Barton, is generally supportive of the bill’s aim.
 
Waxman told The Hill he thinks the message has been sent.
 
“The important thing about the action of the subcommittee is to send a clear message,” he said. “Oftentimes, we don’t need legislation to accomplish our goals.”
 
Perhaps the most powerful message came in November 2008, when Obama told ESPN’s Monday Night Football that he thought the time had come for a college playoff, a point he has reiterated since.
 
“I think it’s about time we had playoffs in college football,” he said. “I’m fed up with these computer rankings and this, that and the other.”
 
Rep. Walt Minnick (D-Idaho), whose district includes undefeated Boise State, said he hopes the BCS gets the message.
 
“I prefer that they decide on their own,” he said. But “Congress may have to get involved down the line.”

(This story has been corrected from an earlier version to correctly name J.C. Watts’s alma mater.)