The BCS is headed to Washington — Congress that is.

Thanks to Utah’s undefeated season, and years of criticism, the sports world’s most blatantly unfair and ridiculous postseason season may be facing a legitimate legal challenge that could change college football in the next few years.

The heart of the argument is that the current BCS system creates an unfair playing field, realistically only allowing about 20-25 major conference teams to actually compete for the national championship. Considering the enormous sums of money that come with making it into a BCS game, and even more money that comes with making it into the title game, the unfair advantages may be crossing legal lines that lawmakers are no longer willing to brush aside as simply sports issues.

With President Obama being as outspoken as he was last year about supporting a playoff, there are reasons to believe that fixing the BCS could be Obama’s steroid scandal. When President Bush addressed steroids in baseball in his State of the Union address, it forced baseball to play be legal rules, rather than live in their own little protected bubble.

College football is the same, with school presidents living in their own little bubble, ignoring calls for a playoff and insisting they are right, despite 100 percent of the evidence to the contrary. Now that they are going against Congress and the president, perhaps they’ll see the light.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is leading the charge, having watched first-hand how his hometown Utes got screwed out of a BCS championship last year. There are no details to Hatch’s plans as of yet. There is also legislation in the house that would make it illegal for the BCS to call any game a “championship” if it is not the direct result of a playoff.

The argument stems from the fact that right now it is nearly impossible (until proven otherwise, it is impossible) for a team from a non-BCS conference to make it into the title game. With the six major conferences getting automatic bids and the majority of the at-large bids, all of the BCS money is going to the same schools and conferences. With well over 100 Division-I teams, there is clearly not a level playing field in college football.

The effect of this money down the road is what is causing the legal issues. The teams that get into BCS games or the BCS title game get far more money that the teams that don’t. The money is then shared with the other teams in their conference. Over several years, the same six conferences keep getting more and more money, while the mid-major conferences get less and less money. This creates an imbalance in the system and leads to more disparity between schools. In the end, it puts the smaller schools at an unfair advantage in any aspect of running a university that requires money.

If the BCS were to say what it really is, which is a league in which the “championship” is only available to the 20-25 teams that it deems worthy prior to the season starts, then this would all be over real quickly. Advertisers and fans are being duped into believing that the BCS is a system to crown a champion, when it clearly is not. By pulling off this jest, the BCS is also denying millions of dollars to schools that should be getting it. They are allowing their major conference biased politics to play God with the fates of smaller schools. They have, in essence, created a monopoly on the college football postseason, and it is about time that someone called them on it.

Since the school presidents and BCS folks aren’t going to see the light on their own — being blinded by their stacks of cash and all — it may be up to Congress to fix things. Don’t these Congressmen have better things to do, you may ask? Well, to a lot of people in this country, college football is important. Yes we want our banks fixed and 401(k)’s secure, but in the meantime, I’m all for our elected representatives working on things that I care about. Fix the BCS, legalize sports betting and online gambling, lower my taxes, and cut the shit with the Barry Bonds witch hunt. Other than that, just don’t make anything else worse and we’re good.

With any luck, this will at least move us in the direction of having a real discussion on the future of college football. It is too big of an industry to be run by a half-a-dozen idiots who have only their own personal interests in mind.

And Senator, if you’re interested, here is my college football playoff plan. Feel free to use it, in exchange for credit and a position as United States Sports Czar.

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