College Football 2012: Utah Attorney General's Quest for BCS Lawsuit Must End

Dennis Dodd broke the story's most recent chapter as Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff is renewing his quest to bring an antitrust lawsuit against the BCS.

Most college football fans should remember Shurtleff from his initial attempt to put legal and financial pressure on the BCS from almost a year ago. Well, much like last year the job is out there and if a law firm wants to jump on this case Shurtleff is open to accepting their service.

While I understand what his initial goal was the fact of the matter is this guy just needs to stop. With a four team playoff looming on the horizon and the Utah Utes in a BCS conference, the attempt to push for a lawsuit really needs to end from the Attorney General.

Perhaps there would be a more sympathetic view of this if he was representing a Sun Belt school or a MAC university, but he isn't; he is in a state that is receiving plenty of money—even as a non-BCS school, Utah was clearing a profit in 2011.

Basically, the guy just wants to sue somebody.

He's well within his rights but that doesn't necessarily make it right, if you follow me. Change that people have pushed for since their respective team was left out of the BCS is coming and the time for grandstanding has passed.

The Big Ten, the Pac-12, the Big 12 and the SEC; all of the power players, are on board with a four-team playoff. Right now, the issue is how to create this playoff, not attempting to tie up college football in a legal battle.

Conference champion requirements versus just admitting the four top ranked teams is the discussion that should be at the forefront of people's minds. The elimination of the automatic qualifier status with respect to the Sugar, Rose, Orange and Fiesta Bowls is the issue that affects the college football postseason as a whole. 

Renewing an already failed attempt at forcing change is not the right move. Especially when the actual access granted by the BCS has been an improvement over the previous situation, and the six non-automatic qualifier conferences are voluntarily in line with the BCS.

No, the distribution of wealth is not equal, but there is true inequity when it comes to the big earners in college football in general. The idea that a playoff would bring equity is an absolute fallacy as we see in the reported earnings from the NCAA's basketball tournament. The big conferences, with the big teams, with the talent, with the big followings are what drives the system. Whether you have a playoff like March Madness or the BCS, that fact is not going to change.