Thank goodness for Congress!

This story broke on ESPN today... Congress is trying to legislate that you can only call a college football game a 'National Championship Game' if it is the result of a playoff.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=4727426

I have so many issues with this...

1) This is what Congress chooses to spend their time on... One member of Congress responded that they can 'walk and chew gum at the same time'... indicating that they have plenty of bandwidth to tackle many hard problems at the same time... GREAT - how about: health care, jobs, the national debt, Afghanistan, Bin Laden, etc, etc, etc... I don't see how this issue even makes the top 20 of the critical issues facing our nation?

2) Some people say the action is warranted as the BCS is in anti-trust violation... I am no legal or anti-trust expert, but the way I understand it, anti-trust issues are dealt with through an investigation by the justice department, not legislating what you can or can not call a football game.

3) All this would effectively do is have the BCS rename it's game to 'The BCS Championship Game', removing the 'National' designation. Then the AP votes whoever they want (as they do today) and the Coaches vote the winner of the BCS game. Nothing changes with the exception of the use of the word 'National'. Thank goodness we have 2 houses of Congress working on this.

4) Is this even constitutional? Can Congress limit the freedom of speech to dictate who can and cannot use the term 'National Championship'? Don't I have the first amendment right to call my basketball intramural championship the 'national championship'? People can disagree and people can laugh, but don't I have that right? What harm is being done to the citizens and consumers of the United States such that you can justify the restriction of the first amendment right to freedom of speech?

Now, I feel like for the sake of truth in advertising I should explain that I am not one of the people clamoring for a playoff... I am indifferent to a college playoff. I like the bowl system as it existed before the BCS, I like the bowl system as it exists today and if there was a playoff tomorrow, I'd probably be OK with it. I just can't get that excited about how we decide who is the best set of 18-22 year old football players.

In a different post I might explain how I think that people want a playoff simply because they like playoffs and that it's not really going to accomplish determining 'the best college football team'. :)