Echoing the sentiments of most college football fans, including both President Barack Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden, the U.S. Department of Justice has posed the question to the National Collegiate Athletic Association: Why no playoffs?

 

Since the 1998 season, the NCAA has used the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) to determine college football’s national champion. But many people have not been happy with the system. Critics have knocked the BCS, which was created by the then-five major conferences and Notre Dame, for being too subjective and discriminatory towards smaller schools.

 

In a letter to NCAA President Mark Emmert, the Justice Department asked why the association doesn’t simply adopt a playoff system, which is used by most other college sports…not to mention the four NCAA football divisions below Division I. It also queried to see what steps the NCAA has taken to create a playoff, and whether it has determined if aspects of the BCS system are unfair.

 

The Obama administration’s entry into the debate comes after a group of law and economics experts wrote the Justice Department asking it to probe the BCS on antitrust grounds. Furthermore, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff has threatened to file an antitrust suit against the BCS, and the state’s senior U.S. senator, Republican Orrin Hatch, has pushed for an antitrust investigation of the current system.

 

As for Obama, after he was elected president, he promised that when he took office, he would “throw his weight around” to help create an eight-team playoff. Back in 2003, when he was a senator, now-Vice President Joe Biden, during a Congressional hearing into the subject, said that the BCS system looked “un-American” and “unfair.”

-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

 

Government Joins Bowl-Game Brawl (by Darren Everson, Wall Street Journal)

Justice to NCAA: Why No College Football Playoff (by Frederic Frommer, Associated Press)

TEXT: Dept. of Justice's Letter to Emmert, BCS (CBS Sports)