The BCS: As American as Credit Default Swaps
Courtesy of The Brokers with Hands on Their Faces Blog
As a sports fan, I am fully aware how unpopular the Bowl Championship Series is. It is a rigorously arbitrary way to crown a national champion, but also a very efficient way of making lots of money for the major conferences and media corporations who broadcast the BCS bowls. It is controversial to say the least, drawing the ire of Attorneys General and Congress. It is un-American to crown a sports champion in a beauty pageant, right? This surely isn’t how a free-market society determines who is the best.
Wikipedia tells us, “the theory holds that within the ideal free market, property rights are voluntarily exchanged at a price arranged solely by the mutual consent of sellers and buyers.” Tell me, how successful was your last negotiation with your credit card company, or phone company, or the authorized Apple merchant? My guess is it wasn’t very successful at all, because America is not an ideal free market society. So how does the little guy compete with the mega-huge homecoming king? If that little guy is the Western Athletic Conference, he hires a PR firm.
The WAC has hired a PR firm to promote Boise State (currently seventh in the BCS Poll) as a team deserving a BCS spot, so long as they went undefeated (which they have so far,) regardless of any other non-BCS conference team’s ranking (ex.: TCU, currently sixth in the BCS Poll.) Congratulations, BCS you are as American as apple pie and “exotic” banking and trading practices. You can understand Boise and the WAC’s stance. Last year’s undefeated Boise squad was passed over for Utah. Non-BCS conference teams have been getting jobbed in various ways for the entire history of the scheme.
The firm’s job is to “keep Boise State in the forefront of the minds of the media,” and not to “lobby voters or coaches.” Lobbying voters and coaches is still firmly the responsibility of the media. Transitive property of lobbying states that, “If PR firm lobbies media, and media lobbies voters and coaches, then PR firm lobbies voters and coaches.” And you know what, it works. The conference hired a consultant to play a similar role in 2007 for a Hawaii squad and its quarterback, Colt Brennan, for Heisman. Said team went undefeated in the regular season over a schedule including 2 FCS (formerly Division IAA) teams and a collective winning percentage of 38.2%. Hawaii reached the BCS and was hosed by Georgia, Brennan was third in the Heisman voting and Hawaii pocketed $17 million, or $1.7 million per Sugar Bowl point scored (disclaimer: the WAC and member schools may have been the real winner here; the Big10 has a “profit-sharing” system where all non-merchandising/ticket sale revenue is pooled then split amongst all member schools. The real winner of Ohio State’s frequent championship embarrassments may be Minnesota, who could use all that sharing for ~$3.5 million in buyouts for Glenn Mason, their most successful football coach in over 60 years. The WAC may have a similar arrangement.) Like I said, the PR campaign works.
Interestingly, as soon as TCU beat BYU and jumped BSU (see what I did there?) the message of the PR firm changed from BSU as a “legit title contender” to “very worthy BCS at-large team”. Seems integrity of the championship is less important than a guaranteed $20 million. I guess that is how you play the game.
