Congress To Fix The College Football National Championships? Wow, Is There Nothing They Can’t Do?

by John Hawkins | October 22, 2009 6:54 am

Just when you think Congress can’t find a way to further involve themselves in every teeny-tiny bit of minutiae in America, they find a new way to surprise you[1]:

A senator whose undefeated home state school was bypassed for the college football national championship last season urged President Barack Obama on Wednesday to ask the Justice Department to investigate the Bowl Championship Series, citing Obama’s own concerns about the way the top team is crowned in building a case for action.

“Mr. President, as you have publicly stated on multiple occasions, the BCS system is in dire need of reform,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said in a 10-page letter to Obama calling for an antitrust probe of the BCS. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the letter.

Shortly after his election last year, Obama said he was going “to throw my weight around a little bit” to nudge college football toward a playoff system.

Obama and Hatch are among the many critics of how the BCS – a complex system of computer rankings and polls that often draws criticism – determines its national champion.

Seriously? SERIOUSLY?

I’m not even going to use the “We’ve got a tanking economy, job losses, a mounting deficit, and a war on terrorism happening right now, so do we have time for this nonsense” line. Know why? Because no matter how many other problems we had solved, it would still be stupid for Congress to get involved in the college football playoff system. If a Constitutional Amendment was passed that specifically gave Congress the power to regulate the Bowl Championship Series, it would still be dumb for them to be involved in it.

The very fact that there are people in DC who believe that Congress should be involved in deciding how the college football national championship are run should scare the living Hell out of people. After all, if they’re getting involved in that, what’s next? Is Nancy Pelosi going to determine what you’re allowed to eat for dinner each night? Is Barney Frank going to be picking out what color rugs you can have in your house? Is Barack Obama going to be deciding what television shows you can be allowed to watch? When we have a government that sees no limits on its own power and no matter that is too small for it to regulate, our freedom is in much greater peril than we may realize.