Flak Magazine: Kick Out the Sports! 12.05.05

My politics tend to be liberal, but when it comes to legislative involvement in sports, I'm a hard-core conservative. Nothing good can come from your Congresspeople or state legispeople sticking their knobby, alcohol-red noses into sports.

I don't care if you tell me that House hearings on steroids in baseball finally got the major leagues to enact stiff suspensions for their use and — with Rafael Palmeiro pointing the finger of denial a few months before he tested positive — gave us Washington's most bald-faced, finger-wagging lie since President Clinton declared he did not have sexual relations with that woman. Miss Lewinsky.

Legislators only get involved in sports to, pardon the pun, score the cheapest of political points with their constituents. (I'm discounting the way they get involved by delivering loads of tax breaks and free stadiums — stuff that has real-life effects.) They pile on the statesmanship like they're Churchill at Yalta, grandstanding in ways they never would if the question were, oh, what should we do about being misled into a quagmire in a certain Middle Eastern country.

The latest legislator who can't keep his grubby, lobbyist-stained mitts off sports is Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas. Barton usually uses his position as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to do the oil industry's bidding, but with gas prices coming down, he's apparently decided he can take a break to call for Congress to look into college football's Bowl Championship Series.

"College football is not just an exhilarating sport, but a billion-dollar business that Congress cannot ignore," Barton said, talking like a press release. "Too often college football ends in sniping and controversy, rather than winners and losers. The current system of determining who's No. 1 appears deeply flawed."

Well, Congressman Barton, way to stick your political neck out! Why don't you take another controversial stand and declare that puppies are cute? Better yet, have a subcommittee conduct hearings about it!

That's exactly what Barton is doing — having a subcommittee conduct hearings about it. The BCS, not puppies. The hearings are tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, after college matchups are finalized. Lest you think Barton is some wingnut going off on his own, remember the steroid hearings, in which Reps. Tom Davis, R-Va., and Henry Waxman, D-Calif., were eerily arm-in-arm in declaring that something had to be done about steroids for, and you can see this coming, the children. Surely, we all shudder to think what harm the children will suffer if a poll continues to decide the best college football team.

Barton says no legislation is expected, but that he hopes the hearings will lead to discussions and improvements. Hearing this, I'm reminded of the joke my libertarian father always told about the three big lies: "I'll respect you in the morning," "The check is in the mail" and the punch line, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you." To be fair to Barton, he's not the first legislator to look into the BCS — a Senate panel did the same in 2003.

Look, we all know that a playoff would be far more satisfactory for those fans who would like a college football championship decided, as they say, on the field. But is Congressional involvement really the best way to go about this? Even if somehow Congress were legally able to impose a playoff, it would end up mucking it up with regulations such as farming out referees' services to the lowest bidder, or requiring the winning team to appear at ground-breaking ceremonies for certain powerful politicians' pet projects.

State legislators like to get into the act of sports, as well, usually as pissed-off fans who sound like they're crafting legislation at their local sports bar.

For example, there is Jeff Roorda, a Democrat in the Missouri General Assembly. He was incensed at the umpiring while his St. Louis Cardinals lost to the Houston Astros in the National League Championship Series. Most of us would have just bitched to a talk-radio station. But Roorda decided he would declare his intention to introduce a bill that would extend the state's athletes and entertainers tax, paid by those who perform in Missouri but don't live there, to the men in blue.

Roorda's tortured logic in going from hating any official who ruled aganist his beloved Cardinals to taxing the umps as "sound policy" is that umpires are entertainers because they affect the outcome of a game. Entertainers? Well, I'll give you Enrico Pallazzo in The Naked Gun.

Roorda said he would file his bill Dec. 1, but the Missouri legislative calendar doesn't list it yet. That doesn't necessarily mean it's not coming. And it doesn't mean Roorda isn't watching for anyone else who ticks him off. Telemarketers, store clerks, people who cut him off in traffic — they all could be taxed if Roorda finds them alternately maddening and entertaining.

We, the American people, and even any non-Americans who might be reading this, can agree that government needs to be involved in providing services no private vendor could afford or deliver, protecting the oppressed (whether you define them as the poor or the multinational corporations) and generating paperwork. Making sure college football playoffs or umpires are sufficiently regulated doesn't add anything necessary to that mission, even if it can generate loads of paperwork.

I think back to the wise words spoken by Mark Boyle, the Indiana Pacers' radio play-by-play voice and, at one time, an Indianapolis sports talk-radio host. In 1992, he interviewed an Indiana House member who was part of a bipartisan effort to write letters to the NCAA demanding they investigate the refereeing during Duke's defeat of the Indiana Hoosiers in the basketball Final Four. The legislators would not come right out and say the fix was in, though they hinted so in their letters, and the Republican member hinted to Boyle, that CBS wanted Duke in the final.

Boyle asked how much state money was spent on this project. The member said, "Well, 29 cents for the stamp." Boyle responded: "Well, don't you think 29 cents is too much for spend FOR SOMETHING THIS IDIOTIC?"

Hey, at least they didn't try to tax the referees.

E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.