Wendell Barnhouse: Lawmakers seeking government probe of BCS are offsides

Three separate news items last week again illustrated the convoluted and cockeyed nature of college football’s postseason.

Story No. 1: Three members of Congress — one each from Hawaii, Georgia and Idaho — want the Justice Department’s antitrust division to investigate whether the Bowl Championship Series is an illegal restriction on trade.

Story No. 2: Hawaii’s payday from participating in the BCS Sugar Bowl was $4.4 million. Boise State, which played in the BCS’ 2007 Fiesta Bowl received $4.3 million.

Story No. 3: When the NCAA’s bowl certification committee meets next week, it will hear pitches from three new bowl games. If all three are approved, there will be 35 bowl games for the upcoming season.

So three members of Congress — representing states whose football teams’ fans believe got the shaft from the system the last two seasons — want the Justice Department to spend our tax dollars and waste its valuable investigatory time targeting the BCS.

(Had the lawmakers asked the Defense department to fire a couple of cruise missiles at the BCS, I would say, “You go, guys.”)

One must assume that everything in the good ol’ U.S. of A. is just peachy keen hunky dory if our elected officials and our judicial branch have nothing better to do than investigate a sport.

Two words: Mitchell Report.

Story No. 1 is silly enough. The last two seasons, Hawaii and Boise State have benefitted from enlarged BCS access that came about after testimony before Congress in 2005.

When you mix in Stories No. 2 and No. 3, Story No. 1 could be the lead item on The Daily Show.

(Side note: Georgia Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, one of The Three Unwise Men, already has been skewered on The Daily Show. After being quizzed about sponsoring legislation to have The Ten Commandments posted in Congress he could name only three of the ten.)

How exactly is Hawaii pocketing $4.4 million from a bowl game considered restricting trade? And can there be a better example of free enterprise and free market than the yearly proliferation of bowl games?

Note to politicians: If you’re going to talk about something not in your field of expertise, try and educate yourself so you don’t sound like a blithering idiot — which is a tough task for any elected official.

“Who elected these NCAA people? Who are they to decide who competes for the championship?” Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) asked at least week’s news conference announcing the BCS probe.

Answer to Question One: “NCAA people” aren’t elected.

Answer to Question Two: The NCAA doesn’t decide who competes for the Division I-A championship. It hasn’t had any control over postseason football since the 1984 Supreme Court’s antitrust ruling ended the NCAA’s control of football telecasts.

If a football coach tried to make a point analogous to the one Abercrombie made, he’d be asking Congress to make Canada stop sending all those cold fronts into the United States.

Division I-A college football’s postseason has been, is and will be unsound. The BCS is a contrived invention that works half the time.

We don’t need congressional confirmation of those facts. And we don’t want a postseason “fixed” by know-nothing, grandstanding politicians.