WASHINGTON – Tackling an issue sure to rouse sports fans, lawmakers pressed college football officials Friday to switch the Bowl Championship Series to a playoff, with one Texas Republican calling the current system as unworkable as communism and joking it should be labeled “BS,” not “BCS.”

John Swofford, the coordinator of the BCS, rejected the idea of switching to a playoff, telling a House panel that it would threaten the existence of celebrated bowl games. Sponsorships and TV revenue that now go to bowl games would instead be spent on playoff games, “meaning that it will be very difficult for any bowl, including the current BCS bowls, which are among the oldest and most established in the game’s history, to survive,” Swofford said.

Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, who has introduced legislation that would prevent the NCAA from calling a game a national championship unless it’s the outcome of a playoff, bluntly warned Swofford: “If we don’t see some action in the next two months, on a voluntary switch to a playoff system, then you will see this bill move.”

After the hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee commerce, trade and consumer protection subcommittee, Swofford told reporters: “Any time Congress speaks, you take it seriously.”

Yet it is unclear whether lawmakers will try to legislate how college football picks its No. 1 before the first kickoff of the fall season. Congress is grappling with a crowded agenda of budgets, health care overhaul and climate change, and though President Barack Obama favors a playoff, he hasn’t made it a legislative priority.

College football’s multimillion-dollar television contract also could be an obstacle.

The BCS’s new four-year deal with ESPN, worth $125 million per year, begins with the 2011 bowl games. That deal was negotiated using the current BCS format. While ESPN has said it would not stand in the way if the BCS wanted to change, the new deal allows the BCS to put off making major changes until the 2014 season.

Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law expert at George Washington University, said the legislation could result in a court challenge.

“This is a rare effort by Congress to prevent people from using what is a common description of sporting events,” he said in a telephone interview. The legislation, he said, “may run afoul of the contractual agreements between parties, wiping out benefits that have already been paid for by companies.”

Barton, the top Republican on the committee, said at the hearing that efforts to tinker with the BCS were bound to fail.

“It’s like communism,” he said. “You can’t fix it.”

He quipped that the BCS should drop the “C” from its name because it doesn’t represent a true championship.

“Call it the ‘BS’ system,” he said to laughter.

The current system features a championship game between the two top teams in the BCS standings, based on two polls and six computer rankings.

Under the BCS, some conferences get automatic bids to participate while others do not. Conferences that get an automatic bid — the ACC, Big East, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-10 and SEC — get about $18 million each, far more than the non-conference schools. Swofford is also commissioner of the ACC.

“How is this fair?” asked the subcommittee chairman, Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois, who has co-sponsored Barton’s bill. “How can we justify this system … are the big guys getting together and shutting out the little guys?”

“I think it is fair, because it represents the marketplace,” Swofford responded.

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

The MWC has proposed a playoff and hired a Washington firm to lobby Congress for changes to the BCS. The proposal calls for scrapping the BCS standings and creating a 12-member committee to pick which teams receive at-large bids, and to select and seed the eight teams chosen for the playoff. The BCS has previously discussed, and dismissed, the idea of using a selection committee.

The four current BCS games — the Sugar, Orange, Rose and Fiesta bowls — would host the four first-round playoff games under the proposal.

Valero Alamo Bowl chief executive Derrick Fox, representing the 34 members of the Football Bowl Association, said that a playoff “is rife with dangers for a system that has served collegiate athletics pretty well for 100 years.”

But Gene Bleymaier, athletic director at Boise State University, noted that his school’s football team went undefeated several times, yet never got a chance to play for the national championship under the BCS.

Asked by Rush whether Congress should intervene, Bleymaier responded, “The only way this is going to change is with help from the outside.”

In the Senate, Utah Republican Orrin Hatch has put the BCS on the agenda for the Judiciary’s antitrust subcommittee this year, and Utah’s attorney general, Mark Shurtleff, is investigating whether the BCS violates federal antitrust laws.

Fans were furious that Utah was bypassed for the national championship despite going undefeated in the regular season. The title game pitted No. 1 Florida (12-1) against No. 2 Oklahoma (12-1); Florida won 24-14 and claimed the title.

Army Sgt. Gwen Beberg of Minneapolis, is seen with Rachet, a puppy she and another solider rescued. Rules prohibit soldiers in the U.S. Central Command from adopting pets. Now almost 10,000 people have signed an online petition urging the Army to let Beberg bring the puppy home.

WASHINGTON – More than 10,000 people have signed an online petition urging the Army to let an Iraqi puppy come home with a Minnesota soldier, who fears that “Ratchet” could be killed if left behind.

“I just want my puppy home,” Sgt. Gwen Beberg of Minneapolis wrote to her mother in an e-mail Sunday from Iraq, soon after she was separated from the dog following a transfer. “I miss my dog horribly.” Beberg, 28, is scheduled to return to the U.S. next month.

Ratchet’s defenders are ratcheting up their efforts to save him. On Monday, the program coordinator for Operation Baghdad Pups, which is run by Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals International, left for a trip to the Middle East to try to get the puppy to the U.S.

And last week, Beberg’s congressman, Democrat Keith Ellison, wrote to the Army urging it to review the case.

Beberg and another soldier rescued the puppy from a burning pile of trash back in May. Defense Department rules prohibit soldiers in the U.S. Central Command, which includes Iraq, from adopting pets, but exceptions have been made. Operation Baghdad Pups says it has gotten 50 dogs and six cats transferred to the U.S. in the last eight months.

“I’m coping reasonably well because I refuse to believe that Ratchet has been hurt,” Beberg wrote in the e-mail to her mother, Patricia Beberg. “If I find out that he was killed though — well, we just won’t entertain that possibility.”

The mother said her daughter sent another e-mail saying that she confirmed that the dog was still alive and doing OK.

Operation Baghdad Pups’ program coordinator, Terri Crisp, is scheduled to arrive in Baghdad on Wednesday. Crisp said the adopted dogs left behind face death on Iraqi streets.

She said Iraqis view dogs and cats as nuisances and carriers of disease, and U.S. soldiers have rescued many of them from abuse.

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On the net

Ratchet petition: www.thepetitionsite.com/2/clemency-for-ratchet

WASHINGTON – An Iowa sheriff said Wednesday he has launched an investigation into a videotape showing abuse of pigs at a farm.

The video, shot by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, shows farm workers hitting sows with metal rods, slamming piglets on a concrete floor and bragging about jamming rods into sows’ hindquarters. Greene County Sheriff Tom Heater told The Associated Press that he had met with PETA representatives on Tuesday.

“They provided us with what appears to be some really good information,” he said. “Our next step is to secure interviews with potential suspects, and definitely make sure that there’s no further abuse occurring down there — that’s our main concern at this point.”

Asked if crimes had been committed, Heater responded, “It appears that there were, yes.”

On the video, obtained by The AP, a supervisor tells an undercover PETA investigator that when he gets angry or a sow won’t move, “I grab one of these rods and jam it in her (anus).”

The farm, located outside of Bayard, Iowa, about 60 miles west of Des Moines, is a supplier to Hormel Foods of Austin, Minn. PETA wants to use the results of the investigation to pressure Hormel, the maker of Spam and other food products, to demand that its suppliers ensure humane treatment of pigs.

Hormel spokeswoman Julie Henderson Craven called the incidents “completely unacceptable.”

PETA is seeking prosecution of 18 people on animal cruelty violations. According to PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich, the video shows eight people directly abusing animals.

“Abuse on factory farms is the absolute norm, not the exception, and anyone eating factory-farmed meat is paying to support it,” Friedrich said.

After getting a whistleblower complaint from someone inside the farm, PETA sent two undercover investigators to get hired at the farm and document its practices — one from June 10 to Sept. 8, and the other from July 23 to Sept. 11.

At one point on the video, an employee shouts to an investigator, “Hurt ‘em! There’s nobody works for PETA out here. You know who PETA is?”

The undercover PETA investigator replies that he’s heard of the group.

“I hate them. These (expletives) deserve to be hurt. Hurt, I say!,” the employee yells as he hits a sow with a metal rod. “Hurt! Hurt! Hurt! Hurt! … Take out your frustrations on ‘em.” He encourages the investigator to pretend that one of the pigs scared off a voluptuous and willing 17- or 18-year-old girl, and then beat the pig for it.

Records at the Greene County Assessor’s Office show the property was owned by Natural Pork Production II LLP of Iowa until Aug. 18, and then was transferred to MowMar LLP of Fairmont, Minn.

Lynn Becker, an owner of MowMar, called the abuses on the video “completely intolerable, reprehensible. We condemn these types of acts. If any animals were abused in the brief time we’ve owned the farm, if we still employ these people, any attempt will made to investigate and initiate corrective action immediately.”

Becker said his company provided animal welfare training to the staff when it took over the farm.

Natural Pork Production II referred questions to AMVC Management Services, which managed the farm under its ownership. Mark Jones, AMVC’s network manager, said the video showed “unacceptable practices” and that his company is working with the new ownership to investigate.

Craven, the Hormel spokeswoman, said the farm became a Hormel supplier only after the change in ownership, and that MowMar “shares our commitment to animal welfare and humane handling.”

Craven said it was her understanding that the abuses took place before the change in ownership. But PETA’s Friedrich said the abuses continued, and that the new manager abused animals by shocking and kicking pigs.

Dr. Jennifer Greiner, a veterinarian and director of science and technology at the National Pork Producers Council, said the industry condemns “willful abuse” of pigs and that the video depicts acts that are not acceptable.

“Our industry is committed to handling pigs humanely,” she said. “My industry is full of good people.”

At one point in the video, workers are shown slamming piglets on the ground, a practice designed to instantly kill those baby pigs that aren’t healthy enough. But on the video, the piglets are not killed instantly, and in a bloodied pile, some piglets can be seen wiggling vainly. The video also shows piglets being castrated, and having their tails cut off, without anesthesia.

Temple Grandin, a leading animal welfare expert who serves as a consultant to the livestock industry, said that while those are standard industry practices, the treatment of the sows on the video was far from it.

“This is atrocious animal abuse,” Grandin said after PETA sent her the video. But she disagreed with PETA’s contention that it was widespread in the industry.

“I’ve been on many good farms, and the pigs are handled gently,” she said. “This was blatant, deliberate animal cruelty. These people are sick. They need to be prosecuted. There are certain people that enjoy hurting animals and they should not be working with them — period.”

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ON THE WEB

PETA video: http://getactive.peta.org/campaign/iowa_pigfarm_abuse

National Pork Producers Council: http://www.nppc.org/index.php

WASHINGTON – People calling a federal phone number to order duck stamps are instead greeted by a phone-sex line, due to a printing error the government says would be too expensive to correct.

The carrier card for the duck stamp transposes two numbers, so instead of listing 1-800-782-6724, it lists 1-800-872-6724. The first number spells out 1-800-STAMP24, while the second number spells out 1-800-TRAMP24.

People calling that second number are welcomed by “Intimate Connections” and enticed by a husky female voice to “talk only to the girls that turn you on,” for $1.99 a minute.

Duck stamps, which cost $15 a piece, are required to hunt migratory waterfowl. The government uses nearly all the revenue to purchase waterfowl habitat for the National Wildlife Refuge System. In 2006-2007, the latest figures available, duck stamp purchases brought in nearly $22 million.

This year’s stamps, which feature a pair of northern pintail ducks, went on sale July 1 and are good through June 30 of next year. The error will not be corrected until next year’s duck stamps.

The Fish and Wildlife Service, which administers the program, printed about 3.5 million duck stamps attached to cards with the wrong number. An agency spokeswoman, Rachel Levin, said it would cost $300,000 to reprint them.

“I don’t know that it would be worth it to do a reprint,” she said Thursday. “That’s a lot of money we can be using for wildlife conservation. With all of the needs for conservation, it doesn’t make sense to divert money away from an important cause.” For those people who like to dial by letter, the card does include the proper 1-800-STAMP24.

“As best we know, it was a typographical error that was not caught,” Levin said, stressing that the stamps are still valid.

The agency first learned of the mistake a few days ago, when a duck stamp owner informed them about the glitch. Levin said the agency has not received any complaints.

The error, which was first reported Wednesday by Denver TV station KUSA, is limited to self-adhesive versions of the stamps. The moistened version, which is printed in much smaller numbers, does not come with a carrier card.

The government uses a contractor, Ashton Potter Security Printers of Williamsville, N.Y., to print the duck stamps. Levin said she did not know whether the error was made by the government or by the company.

Ashton Potter’s president and chief executive, Barry Switzer, said that the company was provided with the wrong telephone number.

“We reproduced the wrong number correctly,” he said. “We regret this whole situation happened, but we did our job properly.”

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On the Web

Duck stamp program: www.fws.gov/duckstamps/