NCAA to Justice Dept: Talk to the BCS not us

Mark Emmert

Ha! We actually see NCAA president Mark Emmert's point, though it isn't quite that simple.

Emmert today responded to a letter of inquiry from the Justice Department's anti-trust lawyer asking why there was no NCAA playoff in football rather than the "BCS" Championship.

Emmert sent a letter today in response. In that letter, Emmert says "Inasmuch as the BCS system does not fall under the purview of the NCAA, it is not appropriate for me to provide views on the system."

He also added, "With regards to the Association's plans for an FBS football championship, there are no direction absent plans from our membership to do so. These are short answers to your request."

You can read the entire response RIGHT HERE

Technically speaking, Emmert is correct. What's scary here is that the NCAA has essentially ceded the whole premise of a Division One football championship to a corporate entity. And, while that unto itself isn't a "Holy Crap" revelation, it also means essentially "Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil".

Keeping in mind the perspective that the NCAA Basketball tournament brings "Billions" of dollars to the NCAA's coffers, it make you wonder why exactly they haven't tried a similar approach with football. It, on several levels defies logic. We find it "INCREDIBLY' hard to believe no NCAA member institution has been willing to propose a playoff. We also are "INCREDIBLY" disappointed if the NCAA really gave up the rights to the championship of their most popular sport for essentially nothing.

No, we think there is something more here. What it is, we don't know, but we have suspicions. We think if the justice department did their due diligence on both the BCS and the Bowl system in general, they'd find a lot more hinky behavior going on. We think there are far too many people on the Bowl level and BCS level making way too much money to give up their golden goose. As evidenced by the Fiesta Bowls lavish spending, they make far more money than any of us can dream of. When the guy in charge of the Sugar Bowl is making $500-plus thousand a year for that job, it is way too damn much. When schools are paying hundreds of thousands and in some cases millions of dollars to these so-called "Non-profit" bowl games for unsold tickets, we smell a scam.

Maybe that is where the DOJ should be spending their time looking.