Episode 28: Champagne Room With A View

On the latest episode of NER...Should the Steelers be forced to apologize for Rashard Mendenhall's tweets? Marcas continues his weekly bitching about Frank McCourt's mismanagement and Cacique convinces everyone that strip clubs are the place to be.

Justice Department Starts BCS Anti-Trust Probe

Lest you think the NFL is the only football operation in the country coming under legal scrutiny, college football isn't off the hook yet either.

The United States Justice Department says it has opened an inquiry into whether the much-despised Bowl Championship Series violates anti-trust laws. This step has likely been a long time coming, especially with Utah senator Orrin Hatch having been a vocal opponent of the BCS.

Justice Department officials informed the NCAA of the probe via a letter before holding a meeting with reporters to discuss the reasons why.

Via CNN:

The decision to release the letter came hours after Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a major opponent of the current system, demanded further consideration of the issue in a face-to-face appearance with Attorney General Eric Holder at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Holder then disclosed the Justice Department had sent the letter to the NCAA on the issue. 

In her letter, Varney asked Emmert to explain why college football does not have a playoff when so many other college sports do. She also asked what steps, if any, the NCAA has taken to create a playoff, and whether the NCAA has determined that there are aspects of the BCS system that do not serve interests of fans, colleges, universities, and players.

While most fans (myself included) would love to see the demise of the BCS, it still isn't the kind of issue that the U.S. government needs to be getting involved with. However, it should shake college football's gatekeepers a little bit. Especially after BCS mouthpiece Bill Hancock said less than a month ago that he had not been contacted since, in his belief, "they know the BCS complies with the law."

Of course with the Pac-12 just signing a monster television contract, it means more money in the coffers of another BCS conference. That means a stronger claim on any BCS games and the revenue they bring. Stay tuned, this could just be getting started.

Report: BCS Watchdog Was Previously A BCS Lapdog

Southern Miss AD Richard Giannini
reportedly took a cruise from Orange
Bowl organizers

It appears that Bowl Championship Series officials are trying to do what legions of fans and legislators couldn't...take down the Bowl Championship Series.

On the heels of an eye-opening report about graft and largesse surrounding the organizers of the Fiesta Bowl, comes a report from Yahoo's Dan Wetzel that the BCS has created a task force to investigate potential illegalities surrounding the other BCS bowls.

So who better to put on that task force than someone who took advantage of some of that glad-handing?

Giannini, the task-force member, was one of more than 40 administrators (plus spouses, of course) who accepted the Orange Bowl’s “complimentary getaway” to the Caribbean in June. He was pretty much just following the crowd. (He has not responded to attempts seeking comment). 

According to records obtained by PlayoffPAC, there wasn’t a single business meeting scheduled for the entire trip. The brochure did note that attendees would have time for things like a day on the private island of CocoCay, which “offers activities for everyone, from parasailing to sipping delicious ‘Coco Locos’ on a hammock.”

Of course now we're left to wonder not if the rest of the bowls are shady, but how shady they actually are. Something has to be going on to keep wretched games like the Hawaii Bowl and the Meineke Car Care Bowl afloat. It certainly ain't ticket sales.

Wait, let me rephrase. Schools have ticket guarantees they have to hit, so the bowl organizers are pretty much taken care of whether fans show up or not. Isn't it just a little curious that the attendance for all of these bowl games is exactly or close to the capacity of the stadium?

So while most of the college fooball-watching public has been clamoring for a way to slice up the golden egg so everyone can get a piece, The Powers That Be have had their hands firmly around the neck of the goose.

Virginia Tech Loses $1.6 Million On The Orange Bowl

Earlier this week, the University of Connecticut released figures showing it lost in the neighborhood of $1.7 million on its trip to the Fiesta Bowl in January after having to eat the cost of more than two-thirds of their allotment of game tickets.

Turns out they weren't alone.

Dan Wetzel on the Death to the BCS blog reported on Friday that Virginia Tech took an even bigger bath with its trip to the Orange Bowl.

Total expenditures ran $3,343,689. The ACC, like most conferences, pools all its teams bowl revenue and then pays out the money in an effort to allow teams attending smaller bowls to potentially break even. The listed bowl share for Va Tech was just $1,725,000.

So it wasn't bad enough that the Hokies lost badly to Stanford. They lost badly at the bank as well, to the tune of more than $1.6 million. At least it turned out better than VaTech's 2009 Orange Bowl bid in which the school fielded at $2.2 million shortfall.

In addition to ticket guarantees, schools are forced to pay for tickets even for their marching bands, regardless of whether the game is sold out or not. They are also mandated by bowl organizers to purchase blocks of expensive hotel rooms for expressed periods of time. Yet while the schools must pay face value for the tickets ($255 a pop), the secondary market offered huge blocks of tickets for around $50 each - some for even less.

When UConn's numbers were released, people pointed to the team's lackluster season, winning a weak Big East Conference then asking their fans to fly all the way across the country from Connecticut to Phoenix for a bowl game. But Virginia Tech had a successful season, winning 11 straight games and earning the conference title in the competitive ACC before taking a relatively short flight to Miami for the bowl game. Yet the school and the conference had to buy back more than half of the 17,500 tickets it was allotted to sell to fans.

It's easy (and actually kinda fun) to point at the big, bad bowl organizers who perpetuate the on- and off-field madness of the BCS. But it takes more than old guys in loud colored blazers to keep this traveshamockery going. The universities involved are complicit as well because they keep backing up to the pay window every year - even if they're making more deposits than withdrawals.

Which really makes it amazing that college presidents - allegedly intelligent men and women - continue to allow this to happen. If a Virginia Tech business student were to propose that a company align itself with an industry that continually bleeds even its most successful organizations, that person would be advised to find a new major. But somehow, the "grownups" in this conversation won't object to losing massive sums of money on a yearly basis.

In the meantime, the investigation into the alleged improper dealings of Fiesta Bowl organizers continues. So far, the Orange Bowl remains untouched by the rumors of corruption. But it's easy to imagine that someone is already digging to see if similar indiscretions exist. Until then, you can expect your favorite school to continue hemorrhaging money at the hands of college football's backward postseason.