Next season, NCAA Division 1 football will move away from its 15-year experiment with the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) in favor of a four-team playoff system. The first championship game under the new format will be played at Jerry World AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, home of the Dallas Cowboys. Glendale, Arizona (near Phoenix), the home of the Arizona Cardinals, will host the game in 2016.
The big news in Tampa Monday afternoon was the revelation that the city will play host to the 2017 college football championship game, which is just a little more than three years away.
[jump]Many people, including President Obama, had been critical of the BCS, but more often than not the final game provided the country with a showdown of what the consensus said were the two best teams. That's certainly true of next month's game between Florida State and Auburn, currently ranked numbers one and two, respectively.
In addition to the college game, changes may be coming to the National Football League (NFL) as well. U.S. Senator Tom Coburn wants to alter the current tax system, which allows professional sports leagues in a plethora of sports (not just football) to pay no taxes.
Called the PRO Sports Act, the bill would ban pro sports leagues with more than $10 million in revenue from receiving tax-exempt status. When he introduced it in September, Coburn said, “Tax earmarks are essentially tax increases for everyone who doesn’t receive the benefit. In this case, working Americans are paying artificially high rates in order to subsidize special breaks for sports leagues. This is hardly fair.”
The NFL office earned $184.3 million in 2010, while being exempt from any federal income taxes. It is officially a 501(c)(6), a nonprofit category that includes chambers of commerce, trade groups, real estate boards, and a handful of other sports leagues.