Knudson: BCS Mess

By Mark Knudson, The Mtn. Insider
April 25, 2011

The question continues to be, how can something so maligned continue to be so mighty?

Welcome to the Bowl Championship Series. The be-all-end-all of major college football. And make no mistake, the Mountain West Conference, one of the outsiders who occasionally crash the BCS party, continues to be a big part of major college football, which makes what’s happening in and around the BCS so relevant to the Conference.

It’s been a winter of discontent for the BCS. First, revelations that one of the games, the Fiesta Bowl, has been found guilty of what my colleague Bill Doleman calls “creative spending” (to say the least) and then the news that many of the teams that go to BCS games return home with bills rather than a paycheck.

According to published reports, Fiesta Bowl officials spent upwards of $4 million the last decade or so buying favors from elected officials and BCS execs. In 2007, the bowl turned in an estimated $11.6 million profit while more than 100 athletic departments were running a deficit. On top of all that, it was reported that bowl employees were “encouraged” to make campaign contributions to candidates deemed favorable to the bowl’s cause – for which they were then reimbursed. The bowls own internal investigation determined that more than $45,000 worth of these illegal contributions were made and Fiesta Bowl CEO John Junker, and he and his $600K annual salary got the boot.

Then, more recently, an independent report came out that shed light on exactly how lucrative (or not) going to a BCS game can be for the teams involved. The University of Connecticut, who played in the Fiesta Bowl last season, lost an estimated $1.75 million on their “reward” trip to play in Tempe last January as champions of the Big East Conference. In fact, the study showed that half of the participants in BCS games made nothing or lost money for playing in a BCS game. Two of the teams that made money earned less than $10,000.

Heck, that was the tab for a night on the town for Junker and company.

Common sense will tell you that these creative spending habits are probably not limited to the Fiesta Bowl Committee. Not casting aspersions here, but come on, if the Fiesta Bowl execs are doing it, isn’t it pretty likely it was going on with the other big bowls games at least at some level?

The real point here is that there is obviously a ton of money floating around these games and it’s not ending up in the pockets of the participants. In fact, in some cases, the participants are the ones putting the money into the games with required ticket sales.

And you can’t blame the NCAA for this financial mess. Football continues to be the only NCAA sport where the governing body doesn’t have control of their championship. The more you think about it, the less sense it makes. You can continue to blame the NCAA for giving up control of their big school football championship to a group of money-hungry promoters. It’s starting to look a little bit like boxing. The Fiesta Bowl is Don King and UConn is Mike Tyson.

As of right now, it appears there is only going to be one way for the NCAA to get back control is through government intervention and/or legal means.

The legal channel does offer some hope. Even though the University of Utah is joining a BCS conference, that Utah’s attorney general, Mark Shurtleff, is following through on his pledge to file an anti-trust lawsuit in federal court against the BCS. He says it will happen within the next two months.

Shurtleff sees the BCS for what it is - an illegal monopoly that violates antitrust regulations and harms more schools than it helps. Two unnamed attorney generals from other states are said to be ready to join the effort as well.

While most sports fans cringe when the government gets involved in sports, guess what? Almost every time that happens, good things come out of it. As backers of the MWC and fans of the game who want to see a true championship playoff (which would not only crown a legit champion but also make enough money to help schools fund more non-revenue sports) let’s hope that the end of the BCS comes out of this latest intervention.

See all of Mark Knudson's blog entries HERE.