Politicians Debate Championship B.S.

This is why I have no use for political parties.

U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, is leading a Senate subcommittee debate on legislation that would force Division 1-A universities to come up with a "fairer" system for determining a national championship in football.

The current system "leaves nearly half of all the teams in college football at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to qualifying for the millions of dollars paid out every year," the Senate Judiciary's subcommittee on antitrust, competition policy and consumer rights said in a statement Wednesday announcing the hearings.

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Obama and some members of Congress favor a playoff-type system to determine the national champion. The BCS features a championship game between the two top teams in the BCS standings, based on two polls and six computer ratings.

Behind the push for the hearings is the subcommittee's top Republican, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah. People there were furious that Utah was bypassed for the national championship despite going undefeated in the regular season.

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The subcommittee's statement said Hatch would introduce legislation "to rectify this situation." No details were offered and Hatch's office declined to provide any.

Hatch said in a statement that the BCS system "has proven itself to be inadequate, not only for those of us who are fans of college football, but for anyone who believes that competition and fair play should have a role in collegiate sports."

Where does one begin?

First, the BCS system is a train wreck. Every year. So was its predecessor. So was the system before that. Every year at least one, if not more, teams get the shaft. That's football. That's life. Get over it.

Next, for the love of all that's true and righteous, doesn't the United States Senate have bigger fish to fry than collegiate football. The economy is in full meltdown, President Obama's trying to turn us into the U.S.S.A., Mexican drug gangs are spilling over the border, the North Koreans are threatening "war" and Algore has promised to unleash a new climate change book against us later this year. Don't we have enough freaking legitimate issues to deal with without wasting time on the "mythical" football championship?

We all have our points of view on college football, and if I worked for Sports Illustrated I could wax eloquently for weeks on the finer points of what would make for a more competitive and fair championship determination. But I don't and neither does Orrin Hatch or any of the other geniuses on Capitol Hill who have been there too long.

Since when did it become the responsibility of the federal government to guarantee competition and fair play anyway? I thought Uncle Sam was supposed to defend our borders, protect the integrity of our monetary system, maintain an independent and politics-neutral judicial system, and for the most part stay the hell out of everyone else's way.

Maybe I'm a little old fashioned. I expect people to follow the Constitution AND common sense. You see, that's the problem: our politicians in both parties are more interested in grandstanding on irrelevant issues that may play well back home than they are in taking courageous stands on tougher issues that can mean life or death for our economy or, more importantly, our liberty.

If Utah isn't national champion next year, this democratic republic will survive.

But if lawmakers fail to challenge the rush to socialism, the expenditure of trillions of dollars that we will have to print, and allow a small cabal of high level officials to nationalize firms "endangering" the economy, all in the name of equalizing competition and promoting fairness, there will be nothing of the democratic republic left, and no need for either Democrats or Republicans. At last the enemies of freedom, in the name of evolving standards of equality and justice, will have brought us together as We, the People who once were free.

I don't think we will lament the loss of political parties much when we realize that it was their silly gamesmanship that distracted us from the real issues.