The college football bowl season is underway, and this year it appears the stars finally aligned for the Bowl Championship Series, which will provide us with an undisputed national champion when top ranked Southern California takes on no. 2 Texas in the Rose Bowl. We all know the BCS isn’t perfect, but even the most partisan heads turned this month when Congress somehow muscled its way into the debate. It seems there are some people up on Capitol Hill who would like to push Division 1-A college football away from the traditional bowl program and toward an NFL-style playoff system.

People like Texas Republican Joe Barton, the Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who has called for a comprehensive review of how college football goes about finding a champion. Apparently, Barton thinks college football is more important than Iraq,Afghanistan, the general War on Terrorism, Hurricane recovery, gas prices, rising home heating energy costs because of the soaring cost of natural gas, the CIA leak probe, the 9/11 Commission recommendations, and various Congressional scandal investigations. Barton’s concern is finding exciting football on the TV when the New Year rolls around.

There are 28 college football bowl games, but only four really matter when it comes to the national championship: The Rose Bowl in Pasadena, the Orange Bowl in Miami, the Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, and the Sugar Bowl, which was moved to Atlanta from its traditional home in New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina. Those four venues rotate the BCS championship game, which features college football’s top two teams based on polling and computer rankings.

So on December 7, a historical day on which war and the loss of life are paramount in the minds of Americans, Barton’s committee hauled in six representatives from Division 1-A college football to answer questions about why some college football seasons have to end in controversy when a national champion is decided by a polling system and not on the field.

Between jokes about needing tickets for bowl games and remarks about more important matters they could be addressing, Barton and his committee asked why Division 1-A football schools didn’t have a playoff like lower divisions. The answers he got from NCAA representatives like BCS coordinator Kevin Weiberg and Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany varied from concerns about student athletes having to play more games, to protecting college football traditions, to diminishing the value of certain bowl games as well as the regular season.

Barton admitted that he had no solutions to fix a system that is “deeply flawed” and committee members aren’t going to be pushing the NCAA or the BCS into a playoff system. “We’re not going to introduce a playoff bill after this hearing,” Barton said. “But I hope this hearing causes discussion. I would like to see the NCAA and the major conferences and the BCS come together on their own to develop a playoff system.”

If Barton and his colleagues aren’t ready to offer any legislation on the BCS, why have two House committees held hearings on the subject? And why haven’t the committees taken up the real issues surrounding college sports issues like academic standards and how schools use athletes to make millions?

In 2003, the House Judiciary Committee held hearings on the BCS and how not all big time college football playing schools had a legitimate shot at getting consideration to play in a championship game because some schools were in the wrong conference. But in doing so, the House committee missed a golden opportunity to get to the bottom of the college sports industry’s problems when it held a hearing on college sports.

Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat of Michigan, asked the committee to investigate the BCS arrangement and wanted to know why the vast majority of the proceeds and power have been concentrated among 63 schools in six major conferences (the Atlantic Coast Conference, Pacific-10, Big Ten, Southeastern, Big 12, and Big East) since the founding of the BCS in 1998. In 2002-03 only $5 million out of a total revenue of $109 million went to non-BCS colleges.

The BCS has opened the door slightly to non-major conference members.A playoff would bring more money into college football, but not necessarily to non BCS members.

If he wanted real answers, Conyers should have called the heads of bigtime college sports schools and asked why they are handing out multimillion dollar contracts to football and basketball coaches while tuition is soaring for non-athletes. Conyers should have inquired about the practice of not insuring athletes against injuries suffered in “voluntary” off-season practices, of students being unable to work under NCAA rules if they have an athletic scholarship, and the fact that most athletes are too busy playing sports to get a good education.

It’s time to stop pretending that Division I college football and basketball are some sort of amateur or scholastic endeavor for students. It’s a big-time professional operation that allows schools, coaches, and TV networks to earn big dollars.

Colleges and universities are supposed to be places where students matriculate and prepare for the real world. For major college athletic pro grams, though, the real world is filling stadiums and arenas with wellheeled boosters sitting in luxury boxes and club seats after dining in stadium restaurants, signing deals with corporations for stadium-naming rights, getting money from shoe companies for outfitting their teams, and putting the best product available on the field to justify the multi-milliondollar broadcasting contracts for their games.

When it comes to bowls, virtually every one has a title sponsor. The Rose Bowl doesn’t. Atlanta,s annual Peach Bowl will disappear completely in 2006. The new corporate name will be the Chick-fil-A Bowl and each team playing in it will receive a payout of $2.4 million.

Of course, college athletes do get a scholarship to attend the school. And “attend” is the operative word here, because so many schools aren’t graduating their athletes. Even if socalled student athletes want to go to class, long daily practices and grueling travel itineraries restrict their ability to do so. Imagine trying to graduate from college in the standard four years with a full class load and a full-time job that takes you around the country.

To his credit, Barton did note in the December 7 hearing that 41% of this year’s bowl-bound college football teams fall below the NCAA’s academic benchmark. But the Congressman didn’t pounce on the issue, instead saying that college presidents shouldn’t use academics as an excuse to not have a playoff and then ignore the 41% figure.

That the issue of academic standards was even raised is at least a positive. But in the end, the question has to be asked: Why is the federal government involving itself in a sports debate normally reserved for Saturday afternoon couch potatoes? If the government really wants to resolve the conflicts inherent in the world of college sports, it’s going to need to keep its eye on the ball.