In 2021, the Powers That Be behind European soccer tried to form a Super League of just the biggest clubs on the continent. This project, which no one asked for, offered fans none of the charm that ties the game's biggest brands with the local clubs that are one step above the best hoopers at your local LA Fitness, in exchange for more money for the suits at the top but nothing for anyone else. The project was met with immediate and universal disdain and abandoned at (metaphorical) gun point shortly thereafter.
We've now got a similar stew brewing across the pond.
A group of 20 executives across higher education and the sports industry have united to formulate their own version of the European Super League in an effort to save, or at least make sense of, college football. Their efforts have percolated behind the scenes for three years, and first went public on Wednesday through a big article in The Athletic. I read the piece so you didn't have to.
I'll give the 'Super League' people this: whereas the European version was a solution in search of a problem, this is at least an attempt to do the opposite. Their hearts in the right place, we'll give them that. No one looks at the current system -- with unlimited free agency, no salary cap, fans asked to fund their teams' payroll, an extinct Pac-12 and Boston College in the same conference as Stanford -- and sees a functional, coherent system. This effort was inevitable. Whether it actually sees the light of day is another question entirely.
Here's the best FAQ-style breakdown I can give.
Who's behind this thing? The most powerful name attached is probably Brian Rolapp, Chief Media and Business Officer for the NFL. The brains and muscle behind the operation is Len Perna, chairman, founder and CEO of Turnkey Sports and Entertainment, the high-powered search firm. The only two people drawing a paycheck within higher education willing to attach their name to the project are Syracuse Kent Syverud and West Virginia president Gordon Gee, which says a lot.
Are they actually calling themselves the Super League? No, that was an attempt to contextualize the effort by those familiar with the plan. The name they're calling it from the inside is College Sports Tomorrow, which sounds aspirational in a way that it could have come from a rejected Black Mirror script.
How would this work? There would be seven permanent, 10-team divisions in the top tier, plus an eighth 10-team division that teams from the second division could win their way into.
Wait, promotion and relegation like European soccer? That's awesome! Not quite.
What do you mean? All current and former power-conference schools plus Notre Dame -- the entire Pac-12, plus the new Big 12 schools, plus incoming ACC member SMU -- would be permanently placed into a top division. Similar to how Manchester United and Real Madrid never would've been demoted out of the European Super League, Vanderbilt would remain in the top division no matter how many times they went 2-10.
As for who would start in the eighth, purgatory division between permanent Upper Class status and the second division, that wasn't spelled out, but something like this would probably be the starting point.
How does the College Football Playoff tie into this? The working plan is a 16-team playoff, with eight division winners and eight wild cards. In theory, two wild cards could come from the same division.
How would the divisions be split up? The Athletic's Sam Khan, Jr., took a crack at it and came up with a version that put UCF and Northwestern in the same division. That makes no sense to me, either, but that cuts at the heart of what's so impossible about trying to wrangle FBS, or even the Power 4/5, under one umbrella -- there are no clean breaks anywhere, geographically or historically.
Good enough for me. I'm in. When does this start? I write the following in total sincerity: ??????
The Big Ten's current TV deal expires with the 2029 football season, while the SEC's runs through 2033. The new deal between the CFP and ESPN doesn't even start until 2026-27. In theory, the right idea could inspire all parties involved to tear up their existing deals in place of something better (and more lucrative), but is this the right idea?
What do the conferences themselves think of this? Here's the key passage from the piece, and perhaps all you need to know about the College Sports Tomorrow push:
Thus far, the group is struggling to gain traction with the schools that would play in their proposed “Super League.” The ACC board of directors heard a presentation from the group in February. However, planned dinners with administrators from the Big Ten, SEC and Big 12 all were called off. Spokespersons for the Big Ten and SEC said commissioners (Tony) Petitti and Greg Sankey, respectively, have not met with Perna’s group.
In February, the SEC and Big Ten announced their own collaboration -- a "joint advisory group," in their own words -- to map out their own version of the future. It's likely that was a response to the various court cases, legislative failures, and all other external forces that have been in the news the past few years. It's also likely it was a response to this.
The Athletic piece also includes this sentence:
According to two executives briefed on the proposal, one reason the FBS commissioners last month self-imposed a March 15 deadline to approve the six-year College Football Playoff extension was to stave off CST’s push.
Hmm.
There are a million different grand realignment plans floating around Reddit and the message board space. What makes this one different? How would this solve the off-the-field problems? The theory is that, by uniting under one entity, College Sports Tomorrow could generate more money for the schools than the Big Ten, the SEC, the ACC, the Big 12, etc., produce on their own. There's a reason the AFC East and NFC South do not compete against each other for TV dollars; the NFL makes more money selling the rights to all 32 teams at once.
Also, in uniting behind one entity, the schools could receive an antitrust exemption similar to how the pro sports leagues operate (thus making them immune to lawsuits), and the schools could then jointly negotiate with a players' union to bring order to the vexing twins known as the Portal and NIL.
None of this is new, of course. Perna and his group simply believe they've got the connections and the muscle to bring the inevitable into reality.
The problem -- what some might say is a fatal flaw -- behind the idea is that College Sports Tomorrow is effectively trying to form the NFL in reverse, after it had been up and running for more than a century. If the Dallas Cowboys were paid $500 million a year to play 17 prime time games split between NBC, CBS, Fox and ESPN, and the Jacksonville Jaguars earned $50 million playing at 1 p.m. on the CW every Sunday, joining forces would sound like a great idea in Jacksonville, but would that fly in Dallas?
Bringing 70-plus schools under one entity is a noble idea, but it becomes bloody difficult when it's time to convince the guys with their own umbrellas that look like satellite dishes and a great spot on the beach right by the water to share with the folks huddled under their Hello Kitty umbrella back by the grass and the stairs.
Nearly 1,300 words in, there's my brief summary of the latest plan to save or ruin college football. Is this next big thing, or was yesterday the peak of College Sports Tomorrow? Stay tuned.