WASHINGTON -- Lawmakers waded into the complex thicket of big-time college football Thursday at a hearing on alleged antitrust violations in the lucrative Bowl Championship Series.

Members of the House Judiciary Committee sharply criticized the current system, created in 1998, for selecting the teams that compete in the four largest bowl games, but none threatened direct congressional intervention.

Committee chairman James Sensenbrenner said he called the hearing partly in response to the June decisions by football powers Virginia Tech and Miami to leave the Big East Conference and join the Atlantic Coast Conference. The realignment could net the ACC two future top-tier bowl bids and bring the conference millions of dollars in new revenue.

The ACC expansion, Sensenbrenner said, "has reinforced concerns that college sports have become increasingly dominated by a number of elite conferences which place their financial interests ahead of their commitment to the principles of fairness and sportsmanship that have traditionally defined intercollegiate athletic competition."

Most criticism focused on the economic disparities the system has spawned, with $450 million in bowl revenues going to the 64 BCS universities and colleges in the last five years but only $17 million going to the 53 non-BCS schools.

The choice for BCS institutions, Rep. Ric Keller, R-Fla., said, is "a playoff or a payoff."

Under mounting pressure to reform the system, NCAA president Myles Brand will mediate a meeting in Chicago on Monday among the heads of the BCS universities and leaders of the non-BCS institutions.

Brand denied that financial gain motivates BCS supporters, saying a playoff system would generate more money for its members. Their main aim, he said, is to preserve the major bowls -- Rose, Orange, Sugar and Fiesta -- that have become among the country's most storied sports traditions.

Sensenbrenner told Brand that the growing dispute over postseason football threatens the very existence of the NCAA and urged him to resolve it, saying, "I fear that if you don't, you might be the last president of the NCAA."

Responding to perennial complaints about how the national football champion was chosen each year, six major conferences formalized the process in 1998. The winner of each conference -- ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Pacific-10 and Southeastern -- automatically plays in one of the four major bowls, with the national championship game between the country's top-ranked teams rotating among the four bowls.

Notre Dame is the only independent BCS member.

The remaining two spots in the four bowls go to at-large teams, which must have top-six national rankings according to a numerical formula drawn from statistical data and numerous ranking systems.

The BCS created a two-tier system in which the five non-BCS conferences -- USA, Mid-American, Mountain West, Sun Belt and Western Athletic -- complain that their schools are locked out of the prestige and money that comes from playing in the elite bowls.

No non-BCS schools have played in the top four bowls since the system was established. Most of them have formed a protest group that wants to replace the BCS system with a postseason playoff round similar to the NCAA basketball tournament. Presidents of the BCS schools rejected a football playoff two months ago.

Tulane president Scott Cowen noted that Rice won the College World Series last spring -- its first championship in any sport -- and Marquette went to the men's basketball Final Four. The BCS system, he said, renders such Cinderella stories virtually impossible in college football.

"Fans love underdogs and longshots," Cowen said. "History has shown that they are more than willing to support a system that produces such matchups."

Retired 49ers star Steve Young, a former BYU quarterback, testified against the BCS system, saying it puts colleges and universities at a recruiting disadvantage.

At one point, when a bell rang during his testimony, Sensenbrenner explained it was warning lawmakers they had five minutes to make a vote on the House floor.

"I'm used to playing with buzzers," Young said, bringing laughter.