United Liberty

George Will, the best columnist we will read in our lifetime, sets his sites on congressional involvement in the Bowl Championship Series (BCS):

Rep. Joe Barton, who considers the BCS part of the axis of evil, is incandescent and prepared. In January, this 13-term Republican, whose district includes Cowboys Stadium and nearly nuzzles TCU in Fort Worth, introduced the College Football Playoff Act of 2009, which says: It shall be unlawful to “promote, market, or advertise” a postseason Division I football game as a national championship game unless it is “the final game of a single elimination post-season playoff system” for which all Division I teams are, at the beginning of the season, equally eligible.

Barton believes in limited government, but not so limited that it cannot right outrageous wrongs, such as the absence of a playoff. Bipartisanship lives: Barack Obama, who wants to fix everything — health care, the climate, the pothole on your street, college football — also wants a playoff.
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The BCS has effectively created a two-tier bowl system — the big four bowls plus the national championship game, with their gigantic television contracts, and the 29 much less profitable bowls — which is unfair. It also is none of Congress’s business.

Barton’s bill makes the usual perfunctory nod to the Constitution, finding that college teams travel in interstate commerce and college games “involve and affect” such commerce and therefore — the usual non sequitur — it is fine for Congress to meddle.

Barton’s bill, which should draw a 15-yard penalty for unnecessary roughness to the idea of limited government, demonstrates how Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce has become an end run around that idea.

We discuss this issue in this week’s United Liberty Podcast, so I don’t want to ruin that, but why Congress is getting involved in this, I’ll never know.