House Panel Passes Bill That Would Require College Football Playoffs

2 years ago

0 Comments Say Something »

Text Size

Correspondent

A House panel has passed a measure that would require NCAA Division I football to adopt a playoff system to determine a national champion.

The bill approved Wednesday by a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee would ban college football promoters from using the term "national championship" unless that title contest is the result of a playoff, the Associated Press reported.

The legislation was sponsored by Texas Republican Joe Barton, who said the current Bowl Championship Series is unfair and won't change unless prompted by Congress.

Some lawmakers on the subcommittee said Congress has more important issues to discuss than college football, and the head of the BCS agreed.

"With everything going on in the country, I can't believe that Congress is wasting time and spending taxpayers' money on football," BCS executive director Bill Hancock told the A.P. "We feel strongly that managing of college sports is best left to the people in higher education."

Barton maintains that Congress should get involved because "at this level, college football is a multibillion-dollar business" not much different from other businesses that have government oversight.

Filed Under: House

Tagged: bowl championship series, BowlChampionshipSeries, Daily Guidance, DailyGuidance, House

Our New Approach to Comments

In an effort to encourage the same level of civil dialogue among Politics Daily’s readers that we expect of our writers – a “civilogue,” to use the term coined by PD’s Jeffrey Weiss – we are requiring commenters to use their AOL or AIM screen names to submit a comment, and we are reading all comments before publishing them. Personal attacks (on writers, other readers, Nancy Pelosi, George W. Bush, or anyone at all) and comments that are not productive additions to the conversation will not be published, period, to make room for a discussion among those with ideas to kick around. Please read our Help and Feedback section for more info.