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.
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