It was a great game, with a little of everything in it for college football fans – interceptions, injuries, trick plays, and heartwarming stories of players who faced adversity and kept going.

However, there was something just not right about it.  This is not the game we should have had.

It has been over a month since the BCS, aided by computers (what would we do without them?), decided which two teams would face each other in its don’t-call-it-a-national-championship game. There were four more Saturdays of college football in which the fans could have had the playoff that included all of the best teams in football, not just those ordained by a group of insiders deadset on protecting their million dollar paychecks.

Joe Paterno said it best in a recent interview with ESPN. “We must have a championship game. We get forgotten after we finish the season. I don’t like the BCS. I think we need a playoff.”

The team with even one loss gets forgotten because their fate is decided immediately upon the regular season’s end. And what’s worse for teams that are not in an elite conference such as Penn State, even with a perfect season, a mid-major will be similarly exiled. Just ask Boise State how they felt after beating TCU in the anticlimactic Fiesta Bowl.

As responsible sports fans, we want the college football season to last with an eye toward keeping our school’s athletes healthy – but with meaningful games leading up to the crowning of a true champion.

Without a playoff in the month of December, we will never know. If that means Alabama doesn’t play Jack State in September, so be it. We’d rather see an Alabama-Florida playoff rematch then the Florida-Charleston Southern blowout in Week 1.

Picking the final two teams for NCAA Football’s top prize  shouldn’t include a debate of what clique they hang out in. In this new decade, let the champion be decided on the field.

The Quinnipiac University National Poll numbers suggest that the public wants to scrap the current system for a playoff.  SFC board member Dave Zirin wrote an article published in the LA Times advocating for Congress to get involved.

While the public is split about 50/50 on whether Congress should lean on the BCS, the Sports Fans Coalition is not.  When sports issues enter Congress, there is a tendency for public disgust.  However, the public disgust over the inaction by the BCS is the greater evil in this situation.

In fact, rather than ameliorating the situation with sports fans, the BCS has hired Ari Fleischer to make their inaction look better, their stubbornness to appear like justice was served.

The truth is that no justice has been served.  It is an injustice that tonight’s college football game is the last of the season.  Texas and Alabama compete for a non-title while Boise State remains undefeated, and Florida overpowers Cincinnati for a consolation prize.

There is no consolation for the college football fan.  There is no dance.

It’s entertaining, sickening, and informative.

Click on the link in the NEWS section titled ‘Congress Should Bench the BCS’.

Especially for those still questioning whether Congress should get involved, it’s worth the read.

A double-OT win for Wyoming over Fresno State in the New Mexico Bowl didn’t just make Dick Cheney smile.  A smirk was also found on the face of the Executive Director of the Bowl Championship Series Bill Hancock who has been spreading lies about how a playoff would hurt college football fans, and the economies of towns who currently host non-BCS bowl games.

According to TIME Magazine, Hancock is one of the most loved men in the sports industry.  So, for those questioning the use of the word ‘lies’, it would be wise to read his unpalatable explanation predicting lost interest in the regular season, economic downfall for host cities of bowl games (assuming that host cities would have to change at all), and every other plague mentioned in Exodus short of raining amphibians, if in fact a playoff is instituted.

Furthermore, Hancock’s piece in USA Today illustrates how out of touch he is with the simple desires of the college football fan.  That is obvious quite early in this written plea, but never moreso than when he dares to state that ‘playoffs burden the fans’.  After going on and on about how great it is to create memories going on road trips to see one’s alma mater in the post-season, this becomes a ‘burden’ when it’s inconvenient for his argument.

It’s a healthy practice to examine the argument in detail.  It’s also a good excercise to pull back the curtain to see who is spending what on whom to get what done in terms of lobbyists’ efforts to influence our currently inequitable system for better or worse.

One thing is for sure:  The SFC will be following this issue closely, pushing for a playoff with our friends at Playoff PAC until that goal is realized.  Awaiting Hancock’s smile turned upside down to pure frown.

The measure, which SFC reported on and approved on Monday, “would ban promoting, marketing or advertising a ‘national championship game’ unless the game is part of a single-elimination playoff tournament like the National Football League playoffs, lest college football’s governing body be held in violation of Federal Trade Commission truth-in-advertising provisions.”

The bill appeared to anger BCS Executive Director Bill Hancock who has repeatedly claimed that congress has ‘more important things to do’.  Sounds like a Karl Rovian or Fleischeresque, if you will, tactic focusing on the WMD’s.  That is, Weapons of Mass Distraction.  Fortunately, the subcommittee chairman and co-sponsor of the bill, Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Illinois) slapped Hancock down with a classic line, “We can walk and chew gum at the same time,” that could have just as easily been uttered by Clint Eastwood in the final scene of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

For any still on the fence about the legitimacy of ‘congressional meddling’ in this instance, please read John Feinstein’s rant in Monday’s Washington Post.  It’s a scathing review of a system that’s more dysfunctional than your typical family gettogether around the holidays.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/71005-house-committee-to-mark-up-college-football-bill

Consistent with the Sports Fans Coalition’s agenda, the markup of Rep. Joe Barton’s measure introduced in January of 2009, The College Football Playoff Act of 2009, “would ban promoting, marketing or advertising a ‘national championship game’ unless the game is part of a single-elimination playoff tournament like the National Football League playoffs, lest college football’s governing body be held in violation of Federal Trade Commission truth-in-advertising provisions.”

We wholeheartedly support Representative Barton and Senator Orin Hatch (R-Utah) in their efforts to continue to apply pressure on the NCAA, BCS, and all the Conference and University Presidents who resist change for fear of losing their slice of the BCS pie.  We support their efforts to expose the injustice for the benefit of the sports fan.

By years end, there will be a handful of undefeated teams left, and despite the fact that one’s alma mater might win the Citi BCS National Championship Game, there will still be some remorse in the fact that it’s not a bona fide national championship. All doubt was not removed. The results are in and they leave us wanting more.

Some would argue that this is a good thing. In this case, ‘some’ refers to Ari Fleischer and the BCS. They are using dissatisfaction to market their sport. The debate, in their opinion, is more exciting than actually watching a great game between two teams who deserve to be on the field based on their performance in a previously held playoff contest in order to crown a true champ.

If you take a look at the lineup of BCS Bowls this year, you are seeing the matchups of conferences before the results are even in. What does that tell you? It is proof positive that the current system of predetermination is unfair and underwhelming.

The fact is that these BCS Bowl positions are promised to certain conferences long before the first kickoff of the season. We are left with a week of weak programming; a slew of lopsided victories just so contractual obligations are satisfied while the fans are left unsatisfied.

We won’t see the underdog triumph. The system is built in a way to reward affiliation and association over actual wins and losses on the field. The BCS benefits those teams in big conferences, and even the most respected coaches in those ‘elite’ conferences like Joe Paterno want this ‘bogus‘ system changed. Even though Texas is the heir apparent to this year’s BCS National Championship, their head coach Mack Brown has stated that there should not be a distinction between BCS and non-BCS schools and that all schools should be treated equally.

The penultimate example of how anticlimactic Division IA football has become at the hands of those administering the BCS is found this Saturday when the number 1 ranked Florida Gators face the number 2 ranked Alabama Crimson Tide for the SEC Championship in Atlanta, Georgia. Now, why would a game pitting number 1 vs. number 2 be disappointing? It’s because there will be no chance for either team to avenge the loss.

Think of all the possibilities. Sports Illustrated has already done so creating a mock 16-team playoff that would serve as a fitting format for a 4 week thrill ride filled with matchups based on merit and quality of play rather than the conference your University President bought its way into analogous to being a member of a country club.

Instead, the SEC Championship this Saturday represents what could have been. While it’s near impossible to find a ‘supporter of the BCS that isn’t paid by the BCS’ according to James Carville, we are surrounded by the pro-playoff contingent who won’t be satisfied until we see a National Championship decided on the field.

Until then, we just won’t be satisfied.

I suppose if you can handle 9/11 and the ensuing war in Afghanistan, you can handle the onslaught of public discontent about your less than adequate system for deciding who wins the college football National Championship.  Or can you?

The Ari Fleischer-led public relations team representing the Bowl Championship Series launched a twitter account over the weekend to disastrous consequences.  Click here for up to the second updates from fans across the country who are unsatisfied with the status quo and who openly disparage this poor excuse for a positive public face to the obviously unjust BCS.

Even more laughable is the Washington Times article at the bottom of the twitter page written by Harvey S. Pearlman championing the system that provides no champion.  Pearlman just so happens to be the Chancellor of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and chairman of the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee.

This humor is not lost on our good friend Matthew Sanderson, spokesman for the Playoff PAC, who noted the recent Sports Illustrated poll which found that 90% of college football fans would prefer a playoff to the current post-season system.  Furthermore, Sanderson told Politico that “this hire says a lot about the state of college football. The BCS needs a hired mercenary to sell the system.”

Fleischer’s first step was to organize the message that sports fans are not organized.  While the strategy to divide and conquer fans (based on the differing number of teams fans believe should be allowed to compete in a tournament) is a weak one, it’s all they’ve got.  We know that if we actually get a playoff, any playoff, it will be met with the cheers of victory!

That’s why it is one of the issues we are dedicated to seeing through.  With the groundswell of support from members and soon-to-be SFC members, we will achieve our goal of bringing a playoff to college football to crown a bona-fide champion each year.  All our questions answered.

No playoff means no trust from fans that the governing body genuinely has their interests at heart.  The fact of the matter is, no matter what Hancock says, those cashing BCS checks in the ‘approved’ conferences don’t care about their fans’ wishes one iota.  Nor do those Universities and Conferences care about those on the outside looking in.

This type of exclusion is maintained by a group of well-paid University Presidents and NCAA Officials or, as Washington Post columnist and ESPN co-host of Pardon the Interuption Michael Wilbon described it at the 4th Annual Shirley Povich Symposium last week, this “cartel” we mistake for a legitimate organization locks out whichever teams and conferences it chooses.

The organized crime continues through 2013 with the signed TV contracts, and the current rules state that ‘the champions of the Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10, and Southeastern Conferences will have automatic berths’.  Any school outside of these major conferences needs to jump through hoops just for the chance to be considered, and even then, you’re a computer glitch away from rejection.

For the sports fan, the problem with caring about your alma mater’s football team so much is that no matter how well the players compete on the field, they still might be left out of contention for the BCS National Championship.  When teams like TCU, Boise State, and Cincinnati knock on the door of a perfect regular season, but know from the outset that no mathematical outcome could grant them admittance to the big dance, the inequity is glaring and egregious.

How do you think Tom Brady and the 2007/08 Patriots  would respond after being told they can only play one post-season game, win or lose, following their perfect 16-0 regular season?  If  Bill Belichek’s perfect Pats were competing in the NCAA, they’d never meet the New York Giants in a proper finale, and ‘the catch’ would never have been.

The bottom line is titles should be determined on the field of play.  Not in the offices of NCAA Conference Commisioners, University Presidents, or in the plush new confines inhabited by the first Executive Director of the BCS.

Don’t just sit there and wait for change.  JOIN THE COALITION today, and get all your family and friends to do the same.  There is strength in numbers.