Orrin Hatch: Senate Republican, College Football Democrat

In several decades of public service, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch has been reliably conservative. However, when it comes to discussing matters of college football the Senator walks and talks like a member of the other party. Since 2003 Hatch has been complaining about the BCS and its unfairness, accusing the major conference commissioners of being 'elitists' and threatening to haul the entire show before Congress.

In an interview with CBS Sports' Dennis Dodd, Orrin Hatch Senate Republican appears to be playing a hand from the Democratic playbook railing against unfairness, threatening congressional intervention into a private entity and a radical change in how wealth is earned and distributed among the involved parties.

Take this excerpt:

Conveniently ignoring that the other conferences are securing those spoils because they are vastly more popular and lucrative and whose members have, over time, created far more wealth and had more success than their peers. That's kind of how our system works and theoretically a framework Hatch supports given his political leanings. As the great Get The Picture notes:

Need more?
See above. There are ways to address unfairness in college football's upper division (FBS) but in my mind that involves redirecting a great many teams into lower divisions where they could be more consistently competitive. They'd all balk at the idea, of course, realizing just how much benefit they gain from simply being in the FBS with the actual revenue machines in college football. The best mechanism by which Utah will gain access to that bigger pot is to find a way to become lucrative themselves. It isn't a lack of BCS money holding them back, but their own fan base.

Not many years ago there were a great many successful independent football teams, but now only Notre Dame remains. The rest were scooped up by the various conferences. Even within the conferences, realignment occasionally happens such as when the ACC was able to lure Miami from the Big East. So, too, can Utah be pried from the Mountain West and into say, the Pac-10 or Big 12 if they were attractive enough to the more lucrative conferences.

When we attack the BCS we ignore that the power conferences and college football's power brokers have in fact voluntarily opened up the process, inviting increasing numbers of schools to join college football's upper division, creating the BCS and rejecting the old contractual major bowl system, expanding the number of bowl games, expanded coverage to where lesser programs have far greater exposure than before.

All of that and more either directly or indirectly addresses fairness without threatening a large share of the rightful take the most powerful in the game have earned.

All of that has opened up the game and its spoils to more and more participants, but at the end of the day the game has its winners and losers. This isn't the NFL with just 32 teams, a salary cap, a rigged draft that allocates talent more heavily to the less-successful, and so on. Nor should it be, it's college football. At the end of the day SEC fans are going to spend more money on their schools than Big 10 fans who will spend more money on their schools than Mountain West fans. With those spoils come greater facilities, television coverage, potential to recruit better talent, adoration, you name it. As fans we either accept this and watch the various programs compete as they can in that environment or reject it wholesale.

I accept it. I smile knowing that Florida State was once a women's college and Miami nearly on its death bed as a football program. The little guy still finds a way in this game, often becoming quite the giant. Give it time and some very surprising things happen, and things aren't really as unfair as they once seemed. If Utah does the right things, it will have its day and then some.

So, about that intervention part.

Exhibit A: "As far as the current agreement is concerned, it is my understanding that the current BCS agreement expires next year and that there is a proposal on the table to extend it through 2014. The deal is not yet in place and a number of the conferences, particularly the Mountain West, have expressed serious concerns about the proposed extension. Frankly, I think this proposal is the reason for Congress to get involved right now"

Exhibit B: "The NCAA is clearly not involved in the college football postseason, and that may be part of the problem".

Yes, the same NCAA hypocritically cashing multimillion dollar checks from CBS for the NCAA Tournament while denying an extra year of eligibility to an athlete who played for a year on a tiny semi-pro team while trying to put his troubled life back together.

Senator's lost his mind.

(Several massive tips of the hat to Get The Picture)