By Jackson Posey | Sports Writer
Two major “superleague” proposals which hope to completely reshape the face of college football have swirled throughout social media in recent weeks. To varying extents, both proposals are reductive, harmful to the health of the sport as a whole and will rip apart much of what fans love about college football.
But at this point, it’s the best path forward.
Shortsighted cash grabs have driven much of modern realignment in ways that are inconvenient for football fans and legitimately harmful to student-athletes. Traveling thousands of miles across the country on a weekly basis is already hard enough; doing so midweek, or to play multiple games, is sure to cause real problems down the line.
Consolidation feels inevitable. Either the Big Ten and SEC (and whoever else they want to poach) will break off to start a new NCAA, or a major sea change will keep whatever’s left of the current system temporarily afloat. In the interest of preserving the heart of collegiate athletics, a worthy second option is worth scrounging for.
That’s a perspective shared by many power-brokers around the nation, including a group called College Sports Tomorrow (CST), which is primarily composed of business industry leaders, university presidents and athletic directors. Its proposal calls for a two-tiered, 20-conference system split between 12 “Power” conferences — which would include current Power 4 schools, plus Memphis and the Pac-2 — and the “Group of 8,” made up of everyone else.
That proposal, built upon geographically and historically-determined six-team conferences, would throw Baylor into the “Texas” conference with SMU, TCU, Texas, Texas A&M and Texas Tech. (Houston would be bumped into the “South” conference with four current SEC teams and Memphis.) The season would end with a 24-team playoff that would include teams from both tiers.
It’s not perfect. The proposal says 94% of revenue would be given to the 72 “Power 12” teams, with only 6% divided among the 64 “Group of 8” schools. That’s a completely insurmountable difference in most circumstances but would theoretically keep those schools in the same dining room — even if they’re forced to eat at the kids’ table. The alternative, an NFL-style league composed of only the richest blue bloods, would kick them out of the house entirely.
The other major proposal, venture capital firm Smash Capital’s “Project Rudy,” sounds much more sinister. That plan would completely exclude the present Group of 5, dividing 70 programs across four conferences while expanding the postseason and creating revenue distribution tiers. The proposed $9 billion cash infusion makes the end goal clear: complete monetization. Everything else is a means to an end.
Maybe it’s okay to be jaded. So much of modern American life feels like watching massive corporations race each other to nowhere. The constant hamster wheel of avoiding opportunity cost has laid waste to much more important industries. Much less important ones, too.
But to cling to what is good, and beautiful, and true, is still a virtue. The relationships and rivalries forged by college sports are uniquely endemic to the insane test tube that formed them. Nowhere else would a 200-pound owl be stashed in a United States armory, or feed live bears Dr Pepper in front of thousands of fans. College football is distinct. And that’s a good thing.
Nothing makes a man cynical like watching teams abandon century-old rivalries to chase money bags. Tuition at four-year public schools costs 40 times more than it did in 1963; five-dollar footlong subs are on sale for “only $6.99;” and Miami finished a conference football game at 2:32 a.m. EST. It’s all for the same reason: worshipping the almighty dollar. Everyone is scrambling to avoid being left behind, kicking up silt and leaving everyone behind in the dust.
Project Rudy is a bad idea, point-blank. CST’s “College Student Football League” (CSFL) is much better, but features a terrible name and a significantly worse realignment setup than the NCAA of the 2000s and 2010s.
And yet — it probably doesn’t matter. Call me a doomer, an apocalypticist, a peddler of end-times propaganda. It’s fine by me. Hopefully Jesus will come back before we have to watch the 20 biggest programs in college football form a Saturday night NFL feeder league.
These “superleague” proposals aren’t great. They’re clear steps back from what college sports should be. But if that’s what it takes to protect rivalries, and protect non-football student-athletes, it may be worth it.
Perhaps the CSFL could serve as a sort of amputation therapy, cutting off a leg before its monetary gangrene spreads throughout the body. Alcohol burns a wound because it’s killing the infection. And as willing as I’d be drop to my knees in a Walmart and beg for the Southwest Conference to come back, it isn’t happening. And it never will. But this might be our last chance to get anywhere close.
So, as much as it pains me to say it: bring on the superleague. And may I be the first to shout our milquetoast rallying cry, which will surely echo across the lands: “The College Football Superleague: Well, I guess it beats the alternative.”