by John Whisler, STAFF , San Antonio Express-News

For years, debate has raged between defenders of the current Bowl Championship Series and champions of a postseason playoff system. This year, the fight has reached Capitol Hill.

On Tuesday, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, wants to explore the antitrust issues behind the BCS. Several weeks ago, a San Antonio bowl executive defended the current system before a feisty Texas congressman who advocates a playoff.

"It's like communism," said Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis, about the BCS during a hearing in May. "You can't fix it."

Yet there is another side that is equally determined to keep the status quo. It includes people such as Alamo Bowl executive director Derrick Fox who believe the BCS, while not perfect, is the best system.

"The bowls are a great story and have done great things for America for nearly 100 years now," he said. "It's a system that has worked well - for students, for fans, for athletes and has generated great economic benefit for the host cities."

Not everyone agrees the arrangement works well.

Last season, the complex BCS rating system vaulted the Oklahoma Sooners to the championship game against Florida even though a conference rival with an identical regular-season record, the Texas Longhorns, had beaten them.

Unlike Texas and Oklahoma, Utah finished the season unbeaten but plays in a conference that doesn't get an automatic bid to one of five BCS bowls. The Utes' fate - winners of the Sugar Bowl but not the BCS championship - may explain why Hatch wants a hearing now.

As the dispute warms in anticipation of a new football season, Fox and others are concerned that all bowls may suffer.

The heads of two second-tier bowls, similar in size to the Alamo Bowl, both say their main purpose is providing an event that generates an economic boost for their city.

Bernie Olivas, executive director of the Sun Bowl, said the bowl is the biggest event - of any kind - in El Paso every year.

"If there's no bowl game here," he said, "the hotels are empty between Christmas and New Year's."

Bruce Binkowski, executive director of the San Diego Bowl Association that operates the Holiday and Poinsettia bowls, said the association's mission is to "fill hotel rooms."

"We run the bowl for the benefit of San Diego," he said.

Both Olivas and Binkowski said adopting a playoff format would damage the current bowl system. They said the bowls are made up of a weeklong series of events, and making them part of a playoff would seriously hurt their ability to generate revenue for their communities.

"In a playoff system, teams would show up the day before the game, play the next day and leave," Olivas said. "If your bowl is part of the playoff, there will be no events, no festivities leading up to the game.

"Those events are a big part of the reason bowl games exist. To have a playoff would jeopardize that."

Binkowski said a playoff also would affect attendance at the games. In an eight-team playoff format, for example, fans of the two finalists likely would be expected to travel long distances to fill 50,000- to 60,000-seat stadiums for three games, as opposed to just one game under the current bowl format.

"I don't think they would travel from week to week," Binkowski said, "especially on short notice and in these economic times."

Fox concurs. He said Alamo Bowl week (right after Christmas) was the slowest tourism week of the year in San Antonio before creation of the bowl.

"Now it's the busiest," he said, "because of the game."

But for critics, the bowls fail to achieve the most basic goal: determining a national champion on the field.

Even President Barack Obama has weighed in on the matter. In November, after his election, Obama said he's "going to throw my weight around a little bit" in calling for a playoff.

Barton joined the chorus and, in May, summoned BCS and bowl representatives to testify at a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee's commerce, trade and consumer protection subcommittee.

One of those representatives, Fox, landed in hot water.

Fox argued that "almost all postseason bowl games are put on by charitable groups" and "local charities receive tens of millions of dollars every year" from the bowls.

A subsequent study by Yahoo! Sports found that 10 of the 34 bowl games are privately owned, and one is run by a branch of a local government.

The remaining 23 games enjoy tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service but combined to give only $3.2 million to local charities on $186.3 million in revenue, according to their most recent tax returns.

Barton accused Fox of exaggerating the amount bowls give to local charities and briefly threatened perjury charges against Fox.

Fox has defended his statements, saying testimony regarding charitable donations was a "good-faith estimate" supplied by the BCS and Football Bowl Association.

He has maintained that the roughly $89,000 the Alamo Bowl officially gave to charities, including scholarships, in 2007 - about 1.1 percent of $8.3 million in gross revenue - does not represent the entire charitable picture for the Alamo Bowl.

He said "in kind" donations, such as giving unused tickets to groups and other fundraising efforts, were not reported and that overall charitable donations were actually much higher.

The San Diego bowls gave a similar percentage, and the Sun Bowl donated 2.8 percent of revenue to charities in 2007, according to tax records.

"We try to give as much as we can," said Olivas, the Sun Bowl representative. "And we'd like to give more. But that's not our main goal. Our No. 1 goal is to provide El Paso with a quality event."

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