Congressman: College football's BCS "like communism."

Members of the House of Representatives took time away from the swine flu pandemic to tackle their top issue of the day- college football's Bowl Championship Series.

The House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection brought the commissioners of the ACC and Mountain West Conference, as well as the CEO of the Alamo Bowl and athletic director from Boise State University, to Capitol Hill to discuss whether it is "a false and deceptive practice" to call any college football team "national champions" without a fair and equitable playoff system in place.

The bi-partisan preference for playoffs over bowl games included subcommittee chairman, Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL), who opened the hearing by saying,"Let me be clear that we are not examining a trivial matter at today's hearing. Colleges and universities are funded by taxpayer money, and we have to ask whether or not the big, dominant conferences are engaged in uncompetitive behavior and negotiating contracts at the expense of smaller conferences and their schools."

But it was Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), self-described Texas A&M Aggie and author of H.R. 390, the bill to crack the bowl-game system, who was most incensed by the current state of play in college football. "I don't mean this directly, but (the BCS system) is like communism. You can't fix it. It will not be fixable and sooner or later you're going to have to try a new model."

Barton also suggested that if the NCAA does not begin having playoff games voluntarily, Congress would move to prevent it from marketing the BCS winner as "national champions."

Just after the 2008 elections, "60 Minutes" asked then President-elect Barack Obama if he preferred bowl games or a playoff system for college football. Obama said, "If you've got a bunch of teams who play throughout the season and many of them have one loss or two losses, there's no clear, decisive winner. We should be creating a playoff system."

Full hearing footage is available at C-SPAN.org.