Throughout the 2011 college football season, Cougar fans have been hearing rumors of BYU joining a BCS conference. Since the creation of the BCS, BYU has never been a part of an automatic qualifying conference — a conference which is guaranteed to send one team to a BCS bowl.
However, if certain lawyers have their way, the BCS won’t be around much longer.
Mark Shurtleff, Utah’s attorney general, announced he will soon follow through on his plan to file a law suit against the BCS.
“We are hiring an outside firm to work directly with us to bring an anti-trust suit against the BCS sometime early 2012,” Shurtleff said at a sports law conference in San Diego held at Thomas Jefferson Law School in November.
Shurtleff said he would file a suit against the BCS about three years ago and is finally starting to work towards his goal.
“Just about everybody knows about the BCS and most people don’t like it,” Shurtleff said. “My problem with it as the attorney general of Utah is I believe it to be illegal, the violation of anti-trust laws. I feel I have a responsibility, not only is it illegal, but it hurts tax-payer funded institutions of higher education and therefore i have a responsibility to do something about it.”
Shurtleff recently told the Salt Lake Tribune he plans to have his case filed by next month.
Shurtleff isn’t the only notable Utahn to discuss the flaws in the current college football organization. Former BYU head coach LaVell Edwards testified before a Senate committee in 2003.
“I think a system could be devised that would be fair and equitable and would not alter substantially at all what we presently have,” Edwards said.
Edwards said he believed the BCS hurts recruiting for schools who don’t belong to an automatic qualifying conference.
The BCS was originally created in 1998 to create a system to name a unanimous national champion. Now there are several professors, lawyers and other professionals who are seeking ways to change the BCS.
Chad Pehrson, a lawyer from Salt Lake City, is one of those members. Pehrson is the co-founder of PlayoffPAC, a federal political committee aimed to creating a playoff system within college football.
“We formed that [PlayoffPAC] about 3 1/2 years ago,” Pehrson said. “We formed it recently after the Mountain West signed in with the BCS, back in 2008. That was a frustrating event for myself and a group of friends. … We felt like there was a gap in the marketplace, that there wasn’t an entity that served as a consistent watchdog advocate, someone who could maybe just advocate in various forms for a playoff.”
Pehrson said he also met in San Diego to discuss certain facts about the bowls that raise questions about the various bowls’ compliance with tax laws.
“There has been some discussion about the finances in college football, the wisdom or lack thereof, of paying athletes at some point to compensate them for their labors there,” Pehrson said. “I generally commented on how it leaves a lot money on the table in relation to what a playoff would produce and how that money could hypothetically be used to better fund universities who could then better transfer that wealth to the students who are participating in the athletic events.”
Lee Simon, an anti-trust lawyer, agrees with Shurtleff in pursuing a lawsuit against the BCS.
“The BCS is sort of like the weather: everybody talks about it, complains about it, but nobody knows what they can do about it,” Simon said during the sports law conference. “I think what we provided is what one can do is sue under the anti-trust laws and I for one think we have quite a good case.”
Simon said the BCS needs to go but he recognizes it’s a difficult situation to change.
“Issues are difficult and complex,” Simon said. “Most people think the BCS is unfair, that’s the easy part. The hard part is would the courts straighten it out?”
Jeff Levine, a sports law professor at Phoenix College of Law, has proposed two viable options to the bowl system which is in place today. He suggested creating a football-only entity. Instead of having student athletes, fill a developmental league of 18 to 21 year olds, who, instead of working on a college degree, work on training, working towards getting to the next level.
“If you have the best athletes performing in these games, they would be able to provide the competition the audience demands,” Levine said during the sports law conference.
The second option would be a playoff among the top-ranked teams each season.
“The way I believe it is there’s a great resistance to the playoff system because if there’s a playoff system, then the bowls become obsolete,” Levine said. “The bowls have lost their purpose of being a post-season reward to players and teams that compete during the regular season. … However, this system does not arise if you incorporate the bowls, at a neutral site, for the top 50 teams.”
Alternately, Roy Kramer, who served as the commissioner of the SEC from 1990-2002 and is commonly called the “Father of the BCS,” believes no matter where colllege football ends up, someone will always be complaining.
“Why do people sue the BCS?” Kramer said during the sports law conference. “Because somebody got left out. If we do a playoff system, someone will still get left out. We’ll still have law suits.”
