CBS Sports: Justice will be hard to find when BCS becomes moving target

[TopFrog]

CBS Sports: Justice will be hard to find when BCS becomes moving target

By Ray Ratto
CBSSports.com Columnist

The Justice Department wants to break up the BCS, as near as we can tell to get Orrin Hatch off its lawn.

OK, fine. It's comforting to know that this blow against the SEC kicking annual [Craig James] in the championship game is something worthy of the government's attention. Though I would be more comforted if they could actually find the antitrust violations they say exist and rather than say, "You're good to go if you can come up with an eight-team bracket," they would throw the people who run the BCS into prison for a few years.

I mean, if they're breaking the law, giving them a more palatable way to break it seems like a fairly tepid response to the problem.

But let's view this another way, because what the hell, it's not like you've got anything better to do. ...

 

[Gunner]

Unfortunately, he is probably right. They are whores, but they got big money, big lawyers, and don't care if they are termed "elite's". Because they don't care about kids, and they don't care about competition. The just want to take advantage, especially when it comes to money.

 

[froginaustin]

One of the things Mr. Ratto ignores in this opinion piece is the role of schools outside the 6 power conferences as on-the-field opponents. Hired hands have to be allowed into the gated communities.

College football is not the NFL. Traditional power schools do not want to play in a system that puts them in a zero-sum game with other traditional power schools. Not even in the Big Ten will fans tolerate programs that lose, year after year. Compare support for, and attendance at, Indiana University football with Michigan or tOSU football.

The math doesn't work for a large number of winning programs, if they all pay each other and only each other. Someone has to lose. That someone is usually a MAC school, a directional Louisiana, directional Florida, a Cal State system school, etc.

So long as traditional power schools want to schedule outside their communities, the legal system (and the entertainment market place) has leverage to make them play fair. That doesn't mean that La-Monroe will beat Alabama every time they play, but it does mean that Alabama really can't just take its ball and go home if regulators force the deal.