Taking a cue from Democrat and Republican busybodies in Congress, the Obama administration is considering an investigation of the system used to decide which college football teams get to play for a national championship.
The legal “fig leaf” that the Justice Department is using to defend its attempted takeover of the Bowl Championship Series is that the BCS might be violating antitrust laws.
But the obvious motivating factor behind the intrusion is that the president and some members of Congress just don’t think the system is “fair” enough. They complain that some good teams from less prominent colleges are frozen out of the championship game, and they say there should be a playoff system instead.
A Justice Department official said it was “seemingly discriminatory” that undefeated teams such as Texas Christian University and Boise State didn’t get to play for the championship this year. But we think it would be hard to argue that the teams that did play — undefeated Texas and undefeated Alabama — did not have at least as much right to be in the championship.
But those pro or con arguments miss the point. Can you imagine the Founding Fathers ever dreaming that the limited powers they delegated to Washington through the Constitution would come to include dictating the system used to pick what football teams play for a championship?
A federal government that can mandate something like that is one that clearly believes there are no limits on its power. Congress ought to defeat any attempt to seize such unconstitutional authority.