Craig Harris’ second article in a seven-part series on the BCS is out today and it’s a scorcher. Harris sheds light on the fact that BCS schools are LOSING MONEY by participating in BCS bowls. Just last year, 6 of the 8 schools had greater costs than the conference allotment they received. Utterly ridiculous.

Why are schools losing money to compete in postseason football and by competing in postseason football? Particularly given that football is the most popular college sport. Crazy.

Read Harris’ article here: “BCS Bowl Trips Costly for Participating Colleges”

by Brian Frederick

Collegiate sport has been reduced to little more than a shameless money grab. University presidents have now thrown off all pretense of preserving the historic tradition of athletic conferences in favor of the pursuit of lucrative television contracts (sometimes for themselves) for football. It’s long past time Washington starts asking whether the decisions of these university leaders are in the best interests of students, athletes, fans and taxpayers.

When it comes to conference realignment, the rich get richer and the rest plunge deeper into debt. The collegiate landscape has changed from time to time, but the current changes are happening so extraordinarily quickly and with such reckless disregard for the public good that they are bound to leave behind a swath of carnage, with some schools exacerbating already deep fiscal problems and some being forced to shutter their football programs.

The root of the problem is the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). Under the BCS, power conferences are able to secure much more lucrative contracts, in part, because they (unfairly) have a leg up on the other conferences in the pursuit for the championship. Since there is no postseason playoff and only two teams can play for a championship, these contracts become the end-all of college football, and thus, college athletics.

The current round of realignment is serving to further stratify the existing arrangement of the haves and have-nots in college football. And there are increasingly few haves – forcing the have-nots to spend even more money to try to keep up. Guess where a lot of this money comes from? University subsidies and student fees. Problem is, many of those universities are themselves in dire straits and are cutting budgets and laying off educators. But the subsidies to athletics continue unabated. Again, where is the oversight?

The NCAA claims its “core purpose is to govern competition in a fair, safe, equitable and sportsmanlike manner, and to integrate intercollegiate athletics into higher education so that the educational experience of the student-athlete is paramount.” Well, the former obviously isn’t happening with the unfair and corrupt BCS bowl system. (In the latest episode of bowl shenanigans, it appears that the Sugar Bowl may have been using Bowl funds for political contributions, despite claiming itself as a “public charity” to the IRS. The Fiesta Bowl fired its CEO, in part, for the same thing.) And the claim that the educational experience of the “student”-athletes is paramount is truly laughable, unless they by that they mean that the athletic performance of these young men and women is paramount. Think regularly traveling over 1,500 miles for conference matchups won’t affect these student’s academic work? In fact, it would seem that the only lesson college athletes truly learn is that they are not free to profit from their own hard work.

The NCAA is clearly unable to provide sorely needed leadership and oversight, particularly in football. When asked to explain whether the BCS amounts to an unfair monopoly, the NCAA punted, stating that the “BCS system does not fall under the purview of the NCAA.”Exactly. Instead, the NCAA simply exists now to allow colleges and universities the cover that they are engaged in a fair and honorable endeavor.

And so, university leaders are making short-sighted decisions with long-term ramifications for students, athletes, fans and taxpayers. Fans are always loathe to get the government involved in sports, but particularly in the case of college athletics, the government is already heavily involved, subsidizing most of these universities. It’s simply time that the government actually forced the supposed stewards of college athletics to start answering some questions about where this is all headed and why, when it is so obviously broken, no one can or is willing to fix it.

One congressman, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told the New York Times: “Congress has the nexus to engage. These are tax-exempt organizations now making billions off of unpaid athletes. When it’s a regional league, it seems to make sense. When you’re taking schools practically from coast to coast and putting them in big-profit revenue leagues, we may be at a point where the N.C.A.A. has lost its ability to create a fair system for all to play in.”

Congress can and must act before realignment creates a situation so tenuous, the whole thing falls apart.

The public can now clearly see that the only thing ruling college athletics right now is football and the only thing ruling football is television money. So it’s up to the public to ask of these university leaders: which is more important — television revenues for entertainment or public subsidies for education? Because the two are diametrically opposed.

Brian Frederick is the Executive Director of Sports Fans Coalition. He holds a Ph.D. in Communication and lives in Washington, D.C. Email him at brian@sportsfans.org and follow him on Twitter here.

Today, Sports Fans Coalition unveiled its Just Playoff campaign, which features a national petition calling on President Obama to live up to his promise to help bring about a college football playoff, and which will soon include individual campus petitions calling on university leaders to support a playoff. Below is the press release that went out this morning.

Fans Push Obama to Act on College Football Playoff

Sports Fans Coalition Launches “Just Playoff” Campaign

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Sports Fans Coalition, the largest nonprofit fan advocacy organization in the country, unveiled its Just Playoff campaign, the biggest ever fan-driven push for a college football playoff. The campaign initially features a national petition calling on President Obama to live up to his promise to help bring about a college football playoff and will soon include individual petitions calling on individual university leaders to support a playoff.

“It’s time for President Obama to live up to his word to “throw [his] weight around” and help bring about a college football playoff,” Sports Fans Coalition executive director Brian Frederick said. “The BCS system is clearly corrupt and unethical. President Obama needs to draw upon the example of Teddy Roosevelt and help the NCAA fix college football’s postseason mess.”

“Even supporters of the current BCS system admit a playoff will generate far more revenue,” Frederick said. “This money could be put to work right now by the many fiscally-strapped colleges and universities. It’s time for a fair and just playoff.”

Shortly after he was elected, Obama said in a 60 Minutes interview, “We should be creating a college football playoff system.” He added: “I don’t know any serious fan of college football who has disagreed with me on this. So, I’m going to throw my weight around a little bit. I think it’s the right thing to do.”

The petition at JustPlayoff.com states, “At the beginning of the 20th Century, President Theodore Roosevelt convened the nation’s top minds and helped fix college football. It’s a new century and college football needs to be fixed again.” The petition then asks Obama to “please convene the top educational and sports leaders and figure out how to solve this mess.”

In the coming weeks, Sports Fans Coalition will be working with Change.org to promote individual petitions on every FBS school campus calling on that school’s leader to pledge their support for a playoff.

Sports Fans Coalition is the largest nonprofit fan advocacy organization in the country. It was established in 2009 and fights to give fans a voice on issues like media blackouts, high ticket prices, stadium construction, and college football playoffs. In January, it launched Save Next Season, a campaign that rallied thousands of fans to call on the NFL and NFLPA to guarantee there would be a 2011 season. In February, Sports Fans Coalition sent a letter to Roger Goodell and DeMaurice Smith asking that fans have representation in the negotiating sessions. In May, it filed formal comments with the FCC asking the agency to end sports blackouts.

Last year, Dallas Mavericks (and the fan friendliest) owner Mark Cuban became inspired to try to help bring about a college football playoff — “The more I think about it, the more sense it makes as opposed to buying a baseball team,” Cuban said in December. “You can do something the whole country wants done.”

Indeed, the whole country wants it done.

So Cuban dove in head first, penning blog posts on the BCS, read “Death to the BCS,” and founded a company called Radical Football to investigate ways to help fix college football’s mess of a postseason. In one of his first blog posts on the subject, he wrote:

Again, I want to be very clear to everyone. This is going to be a long, long and difficult and expensive process. There is a lot of power on the side of the incumbents. Which of course , as anyone who really knows me will tell you, is exactly the type of challenge I like to undertake. I may not win all of them, but there is quite a bit of satisfaction in taking on Goliath. This undertaking is no different. Win or lose (and i hate to lose) , it will be worth the journey.

Cuban was immediately deluged by specific playoff proposals – some of which their proponents even claim to have “patented” and in response wrote that “the perfect system is not what is going to create change.”

(We were similarly deluged when Sports Fans Coalition began fighting for a playoff, but the problem with focusing on the possible solutions is that then the conversation moves away from where it needs to stay – on the inequitable and corrupt BCS system. Look, there’s absolutely no doubt a playoff system – whatever the specifics – will work. It does in every other NCAA sport.)

So Cuban and the guy he hired to run Radical Football, Brett Morris, quickly moved away from pushing for a playoff to creating something that is unique to Division I-A football (aka the ridiculously named Football Bowl Subdivision) – and a little less controversial: a four-team invitational to complete with the postseason conference championships.

Basically, the plan put forward by Cuban and Morris – NCAA proposal 2011-87 – calls for the NCAA to allow the creation of a four-team invitational during the two weeks after the regular season when the big conferences are holding their conference championships. Teams from those conferences who do not have championships (including Big 12 and Big East) as well as the independent schools (including Notre Dame and BYU) would be invited based on the final rankings of the regular season. (And invited teams can opt out.)

More importantly, the plan addresses an oft-overlooked (and yet another) wrong in college football’s postseason – the allowance for a postseason championship only if a conference has 12 teams. So that extra game obviously has all sorts of benefits, including extra revenue and increased exposure for the programs and the conference. Why shouldn’t other conferences and schools get an extra game?

In fact, Cuban’s invitational should be even more attractive to the schools than a conference championship because games would be played at the home stadiums of the higher seed. This eliminates the problem of ticket absorption (when schools get stuck having to buy tickets they aren’t able to sell) because the home team’s fans would just buy up the visiting team’s tickets. Further, the extra game on campus provides a much needed economic benefit to the university community.

The whole thing seems like a win-win for fans and the schools.

Cuban’s plan already has some support, including Wright Waters, commissioner of the Sun Belt Conference. “We were sitting around saying, ‘We’ve got to look at ways to make a few bucks for our schools,’“ Waters told SI.com’s Andy Staples.

Of course, the plan’s chances of success ultimately hinge on enough support from other conference commissioners, university presidents and athletic directors, which is a formidable task. The existing power structure in college football is wary of change, or more specifically, losing power. (As most experts would agree, the primary reason we don’t have a college football playoff now has more to do with power than money.)

Some critics may complain the extra game will “interfere” with the academic schedule or go against the “tradition” of college football, as though those are legitimate concerns. As for how it will affect college football’s mythical “most compelling regular season,” it’s hard to see how it would do anything but add some intrigue and give teams something more to play for.

If enough fans in the Big 12 and Big East support the plan – and they should – the university leaders and commissioners of these conferences will see the invitational as a safe and practical way to add some extra revenue while the other conferences have their championships. The real question is whether they’ll be willing to fight against the lack of support from the other conferences who can endorse the status quo in order to preserve their own dominance.

It’s not a playoff, which should appease the BCS/NCAA complex and make it more palatable. On the other hand, it’s not a playoff, so it still leaves fans clamoring for one. But it is a good idea. And if Cuban can pull it off, it should be fun to watch.

Brian Frederick is the Executive Director of Sports Fans Coalition. He holds a Ph.D. in Communication and lives in Washington, D.C. Email him at brian@sportsfans.org and follow him on Twitter here.

Last year, Dallas Mavericks (and fan friendliest) owner Mark Cuban became inspired to change college football after reading “Death to the BCS.” Cuban set up a company called Radical Football and began investigating ways to make money off college football’s mess of a postseason.

Well, Radical Football has finally put forward its first proposal. It’s an NCAA proposal, actually, number 2011-87. Basically it calls for the creation of a four-team invitational during the two weeks after the regular season when most conferences are holding their conference championships. Teams from those conferences who do not have championships (including Big 12 and Big East) as well as the independents (including Notre Dame and BYU) would be invited based on the final rankings of the regular season. (And teams could opt out.)

It’s a great idea and would no doubt add some more excitement to December. It’s not a full-fledged playoff, which Sports Fans Coalition is fighting for, but it’s a solid start towards change. Fans will love it and the games could end up being more exciting than the BCS bowl games. Most importantly, it should show university presidents how reforming the current system can be profitable.

Best of luck to Radical Football in this endeavor. We fully support their efforts. Read Andy Staples’ column on the new proposal here.