Well, I guess we won't be hearing from Orrin Hatch on the BCS anymore. And that alone makes the Mountain West Conference's capitulation to the enormous throw-weight of the No Playoffs For You movement worthwhile.
Of course, this is how it had to end, not with a bang but with the tiny scratch-scratch-scratch of a ballpoint pen to a check. The MWC, confronted with a choice between the high moral ground and a middle finger jammed into their eye up to the second knuckle, chose Option C -- a bribe to get lost.
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| The crystal ball tells us the BCS will be around just about as long as it wants. (Getty Images) |
And what does the BCS have more than power? The money to back up that power. A little envelope mailed to Colorado Springs to let the MWC know its place at the kids' table is secure.
The Mountain West was in a box, after all. It knew it had nothing unless Hatch could actually rain down poison upon the BCS, and he couldn't. The Senior Center From Kyle Whittingham's Rec Room could talk about hearings all he wanted, but actual passable and enforceable legislation was the only thing that would work, and he didn't have the stomach to spend so much political capital on such a quixotic task.
• Mountain West accepts BCS television deal
The BCS folks knew that, and could have told the Mountain West to go choke itself. But it also knows that the best way to end a nuisance is not to swat at it, but to buy it off. And the MWC was willing to be bought because it knew it didn't have the cards to play.
Now maybe you'll all understand that the best way to beat the BCS is to have the nation leave college football en masse, and since that won't happen, the BCS stays for as long as it likes, doing as it likes and pausing after a trip to the bank to gas up for the next trip to the bank.
In this way more than any other, revolutions are crushed. And this wasn't even a revolution. This was just a request to be invited to the party.
Indeed, the next time some grandstanding hooplehead from the 12th District of Somewhere Or Other wants to grill BCS head John Swofford, Swofford can just have his secretary call the congressperson's office and say, "Look, we're sending a check to the Conference USA office, so get off our backs. In fact, we're also sending one to the Sun Belt, and just in case someone in New Hampshire has a bitch, we'll buy off the Ivy League too."
And the BCS' logic here is unassailable, because in America the rule that usually holds in such cases is, "Look, we'll only stop doing the things you can stop us from doing, we promise."
And so it shall be, not just through 2014, when the current contract ends, but well beyond. You can grouse all you want, but the BCS has established a precedent for its survival and it will cost even less to quiet the few remaining conference holdouts than it did the MWC. Hey, it's college football, for God's sake. Money talks, and good intentions walk.
There is one other way to make the BCS change its way of doing business other than giving up your favorite sport, but it involves a meteor and in all probably isn't worth the trouble.
But at least Orrin Hatch is out of your hair, so count your blessings the same way the Mountain West is counting its. With a defeated heart, because unlike the MWC, your capitulation doesn't come with a check.
Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.
