According to an article in the Salt Lake Tribune, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff intends to sue the BCS within the month.
This isn’t the first time Shurtleff said he was going to sue the BCS.
Shurtleff threatened to file suit following the University of Utah’s undefeated regular season in 2009 when the Utes were left out of the BCS national championship.
In April 2011, Shurtleff announced his intentions to file a federal lawsuit against the BCS for violations of antitrust laws. At the time, Shurtleff said he would file that suit during the summer of 2011, but the suit was never filed.
Shurtleff didn’t explicitly state that the lawsuit he now intends to file will be based on the system violating antitrust laws, but Utah’s attorney general would have no other legal argument.
He told the Salt Lake Tribune that, “I think we got some really good, new facts this season to support our case. The big example again is Boise State. They had one loss and finished in the Top 10, and yet they don’t get a [BCS] bowl game.”
Utah Senator Orrin Hatch has been a vocal opponent of the BCS for nearly a decade. In July 2009, he officially requested a Department of Justice investigation into the BCS for violations of antitrust laws.
In January 2011, the law firm Arent Fox submitted a report to the Department of Justice arguing that the BCS violated antitrust laws.
Arent Fox serves as legal counsel for Boise State University and the Mountain West Conference on matters pertaining to antitrust law and the BCS.
Despite Hatch’s request and Arent Fox’s attempt to have the BCS investigated for antitrust violations, the Department of Justice has not acted.
Since the implementation of the system in 1998, no one has filed an antitrust suit against the BCS.
Shurtleff’s primary argument is his contention that the BCS limits access to the national championship game to schools from the major college football conferences.
The biggest hurdle Shurtleff faces is his ability to prove that the BCS needs to be abolished in favor of another system, specifically a playoff.
But the court would likely be reluctant to rule that schools from non-automatic qualifying conferences have a legal right to a playoff system.
If the court found that the BCS did in fact violate antitrust laws, they would in essence force a playoff system upon college football, and that too is very unlikely.
