by Ray Melick, News columnist , Birmingham News

Earlier this week the NCAA released its annual grades known as ''Academic Progress Rates,'' a rolling fouryear measure of Division I athletes' basic progress toward graduation.

The Crimson Tide football team received a 955 score, placing it in the top 20 to 30 percent of Division I.

Seven teams at three schools in Alabama were hit with penalties: Auburn men's basketball, swimming and track; UAB football and men's basketball; and Jacksonville State football and men's basketball.

Does that mean Saban and Alabama are recruiting better students? Or does it mean the Alabama athletic department - with its multimillion dollar state-of-the-art academic center - has simply become better at buying academic progress for its athletes?

Not ''buying'' in a bad way, but ''buying'' in the sense of being able to afford to have the people and facilities to make sure its athletes leave school having had every opportunity to achieve a meaningful college education. When you compare this to the millions of dollars these athletes produce for the university, primarily in football and men's basketball, this is the least - the very least - a Division I school should do.

But then, it was Friday, after all, a notoriously bad day to hold a hearing in Washington, D.C., particularly when Congress is not even in session.

Is it just me, or does anyone else find it ironic that a Republican, Barton, accuses the system of being like communism and then argues that socialism is the way to fix it?

Barton argues the BCS needs a redistribution of wealth. He doesn't think it is fair that each of the ''Big Six'' conferences of the BCS - the ones that get automatic bids to BCS bowls every year - receive about $18 million in BCS revenue, while the five other conferences in Division I-A receive much smaller payouts.

''How is this fair?'' asked Rush.

Craig Thompson, commissioner of the Mountain West Conference, which does not get an automatic bid, called the money distribution system ''grossly inequitable.''

And so basically what Thompson and Gene Bleymaier, athletics director at Boise State (member of another non-automatic qualifier conference, the Western Athletic), want is government to step in and take over.

Why not? That does seem to be government's answer for everything else these days.

Like most college football fans, I'd like to see at least a four-team playoff.

But here's where I disagree with Barton, Thompson, Bleymaier, and maybe a lot of you.

As far as I'm concerned, they can eliminate everyone but the members of the ''Big Six.'' You know, the six conferences that make the most money. The ones that attract the biggest television dollars. The ones that draw the most fans. The ones that win the most championships in every sport. The ones everyone else wants to be like.

Why should the most successful athletic programs, the ones who have in many cases invested 100 years into becoming the biggest and the best, be forced to bail out everyone else?

It wouldn't bother me if they pulled the members of those conferences out and formed a new division in the NCAA. Take the economic and competitive pressure off the WACs and MACs and C-USAs and let the big boys go at it.

Hey, it's not Wall Street. It's not General Motors. It's college football, where ''mythical'' national championships have been crowned since, oh, the very beginning.

Friday's hearings made for nice TV and great conversation.

But before you think Barton's band of three will make something happen, remember this:

Twenty-nine other members of the committee apparently felt they had more important things to do.

-------------------------

Ray Melick's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. Write him at rmelick @bhamnews.com. Join the conversation with Ray by reading his column and commenting in his X's and Uh-oh's blog at blog.al.com/ ray-melick/

Copyright 2009 The Birmingham News All Rights Reserved
	Terms & Conditions     Privacy Copyright © 2009 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.