bamatone.net

Original URL: http://bamatone.livejournal.com/281608.html

And that's a bad thing for the good ol' boy bowl system and the NCAA. Dan Wetzel and Josh Peter of Yahoo! Sports report:

A congressman said he plans to investigate testimony from Alamo Bowl executive director Derrick Fox at this month’s Bowl Championship Series subcommittee hearing after learning that Fox might have exaggerated by millions of dollars the amount bowl games donate to local charities.

Fox, while representing all 34 bowl games during his appearance on Capitol Hill on May 1, claimed in his argument against a playoff that “almost all the postseason bowl games are put on by charitable groups” and “local charities receive tens of millions of dollars every year.”

In fact, 10 bowl games are privately owned and one is run by a branch of a local government. The remaining 23 games enjoy tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service, but combined to give just $3.2 million to local charities on $186.3 million in revenue according to their most recent federal tax records and interviews with individual bowl executives.

“That doesn’t seem like something that’s really geared toward giving to charity, does it?” said Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) after being presented with Yahoo! Sports’ findings.

“It’s perjury if it’s knowingly said,” Barton said of the sworn testimony, which he called “misleading.” “It’s also contempt of Congress. You’ve got to give [him] some sort of due process, but ultimately the remedy is to hold [him] in contempt of Congress on the House floor or send it to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution of perjury under oath.”

The fact that the bowl games and BCS are tax exempt and "non-profit" is ridiculous in the first place. Here's the smoking gun: "Bowl games actually received more in direct government spending (almost $5.5 million) than what they gave directly to charity, according to the tax records." If the bowls took in $186.3 million in revenue, why is the government giving them any money?

Together, Fox and Swofford repeatedly cited two main reasons bowl games must be saved at all costs.

1. Donations to local charities.

2. Economic impact on host cities.

If that's the best argument you can come up with... that's pretty pathetic. Here's what it all boils down to:

The NCAA has no role in the BCS and does not recognize a champion in football’s top division, the only collegiate sport without a playoff. By bolstering the value of bowls through charitable giving and local economic impact, a playoff that potentially forces the closing of a few minor bowls seems like a potential negative.

Some playoffs plans, including one produced by the NCAA, concluded they could produce so much revenue that even a lesser percentage share would result in more actual dollars for the six major conferences. However, it likely would require ceding power to the NCAA’s central office, which presumably would run a playoff.

Believe me, I'm as anti-NCAA as the next Bama fan. But any sane college football fan knows that almost any new playoff system would be better than the current system of bowls and BCS.