Unbelievable: Obama and Congress wants to tell College Football how to run playoffs

This is too bizarre. Are they next going to start running other sports?

House lawmakers are gearing up for a vote as soon as next week on a bill aimed at forcing a national college-football playoff.

Approval of the legislation by an Energy and Commerce subcommittee would represent the most significant action yet by Congress in its oversight of college football. The plans for a markup next week – still tentative as of late Friday – appeared to signal growing congressional support for the idea, which President Barack Obama also backed during the 2008 campaign.

For the last decade or so, the process of picking a national champion has been run by the Bowl Championship Series, a group that began with six major college conferences and has since expanded somewhat. The BCS runs a complex ranking system that picks the two teams that play for the national championship each year.

Prior to the BCS, the national champion was effectively chosen by polls following year-end bowl games. The BCS was designed to eliminate some of the controversy that inevitably swirled around that process.

But the BCS system's congressional critics charge that the system frequently is unfair to college teams that aren't traditional powerhouses. . . .