Posted on Wed, Dec. 03, 2008

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Kennedy: Obama, Biden understand our BCS woes

To the football bubbas of Texas, this Obama-Biden administration isn’t looking so bad.

Back in 2003, when college presidents were dragged before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden said the Bowl Championship Series looks "rigged."

He even called the BCS "un-American."

Joe, come on down to Texas.

Talk to us now about the BCS.

With the Texas Longhorns somehow squeezed out of Big 12 championship contention — in part based on a poll of 54 coaches in other leagues — and with the TCU Horned Frogs wondering whether any Cinderella teams will ever near the glass slipper, now is the time to rally Texas politicians and overthrow the BCS.

Everything in college football is about money and politics, which is why it’s no surprise that President-elect Barack Obama already told 60 Minutes that he wants to "throw my weight around" and replace the BCS with a playoff.

I bet Biden would have won more Texas votes if he had repeated what he said back in 2003.

(Except maybe for the part about how he grew up wanting to play for the New York Giants.)

"I don’t know if you guys know how it looks to fans of teams that aren’t part of this system," he said in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, grilling college presidents from the cabal of six leagues that holds an iron grip over the $125-million-per-year championship game system.

Fans of the Texas Longhorns — No. 3 in the BCS and thus left out of the Big 12 championship game even though they beat No. 2 Oklahoma — sound a lot like Biden.

"It looks un-American," the Delaware Democrat said in 2003. "It really does. It looks unfair. It looks like a rigged deal."

Obviously, Biden’s heart is with his beloved Delaware Blue Hens, but they went 4-8 this season and probably couldn’t have beaten Everman or Stephenville.

It’s not clear which college football team is Obama’s favorite, although the Chicago Democrat’s brother-in-law has coached basketball at Northwestern University, near Chicago, and now coaches the Oregon State Beavers.

All we know is that Obama likes the NFL’s Chicago Bears, even after he turned away former Bears Coach Mike Ditka as a prospective Senate opponent.

Obama, a basketball player in Hawaii, talks more about how much he liked pro star Julius "Dr. J" Erving than about any college football team.

OK, let’s talk about basketball.

College basketball has a playoff for 65 teams.

College football has a playoff for two teams.

And if you’re not in one of the BCS brotherhood conferences — which the TCU Horned Frogs by fate of Texas politics are not — then you beg at the palace gates until the BCS colleges throw out a Poinsettia Bowl bid as a scrap.

The Horned Frogs can see their future this year in the fate of the Utah Utes. Utah beat TCU, Michigan and Oregon State for a perfect 12-0 season, yet the Utes still won’t get to play for the national championship.

TCU’s fate was set back in 1992, when Horned Frogs alumnus and Texas House Speaker Gib Lewis of Fort Worth quit in an ethics inquiry. He was replaced by a Panhandle Democrat, Pete Laney, who teamed up with Hillsboro native and powerful Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock to shepherd Texas Tech and Baylor into the Big 12 Conference and TCU into the hinterlands.

TCU deserved to go to a major bowl game in 2000, 2005 and this year. But the Frogs can’t bust the BCS piggybank.

Fellow football fans, we need action in Washington. Write Obama. Write U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.

She’s a Longhorn.

Write Gov. Rick Perry, too.

Someday, his Aggies will once again play major college football.

Bud Kennedy's column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. 817-390-7538

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