The future of college football is in flux, with the current state of NIL and the transfer portal unsustainable. This problem affects not only the athletic directors, coaches, and players but also the fans of a sport rapidly losing its trademark tradition and parity.
According to College Sports Tomorrow, a 20-person group that includes Syracuse chancellor Kent Syverud and West Virginia president Gordon Gee, among others, the answer is a College Football Super League.
How would such a framework be implemented?
College Football Super League Proposal Details Emerge
When The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand and Stewart Mandel first reported the idea at the beginning of April, we discussed the details available and provided our own amendments to make the design more appealing.
Then, Sportico obtained the “confidential” pitch deck used by CST in their meetings with conference leaders in February.
Here is what became public through Marchand and Mandel:
- The league would be comprised of 70 “permanent” members — every program in the Power Five conferences, as well as Notre Dame.
- The top 70 would be placed into seven 10-team divisions, with an eighth formed out of teams that would be “promoted from the second tier.”
- The remaining 50+ Group of Five teams would be allowed to play their way into the eighth division, similar to the promotion system implemented in European soccer leagues.
- The 70 permanent teams would not be in danger of moving down, but the rest of the FBS programs would have the “incentive of promotion and relegation.”
- The playoffs would constitute the eight division winners and eight wild cards from the “top tier” (the top 70 teams), eliminating the need for a selection committee.
Here are the previously unreported details released by Sportico:
- Broadcast NIL (BNIL): Players would receive proportionate shares of a collectively bargained “FB Player Pool,” which would come from the league’s TV revenue.
- 5% would go to all rostered freshmen, 15% to sophomores, 30% to juniors, and 50% to seniors/graduate students.
- A “NIL Roster Cap” would be introduced, requiring individual NIL payments at a single school to be less than those earned through the group licensing/BNIL deals.
- Exceeding the cap in a season would be punished with the loss of transfer and scholarship slots.
- Falling under 80% of the pre-established “NIL Roster Floor” for two consecutive seasons would relegate the program to the Tier 2 league.
- The regular season would consist of 14 games (one bye week), beginning in August and ending on Thanksgiving weekend. There would then be a 16-team playoff played over five weeks, which could be expanded to 24 teams without increasing weeks played.
- A “college football spring festival” would comprise 40 spring games played by Tier 1 programs every April. Concerts and other events would be included, commercializing the spring portion of the schedule.
- Each team would have 85 roster spots with a maximum of 70 scholarship players.
- A minimum of 50 must be players recruited by the program from high school.
- Players can transfer twice within a five-year legibility window.
- Two transfer portal windows each year with a maximum of 10 additions per team for each one.
- An “open” window in February and a “supplemental” one in March.
- Schools would have to make “player transfer payments” to an athlete’s former program for acquisitions made in the open window.
- An “open” window in February and a “supplemental” one in March.
However, CST officially announced its proposal on Tuesday, dubbing the national league concept the “College Student Football League (CSFL).”
While all of the previous details are interesting and paint a clearer picture of how the CSFL could be implemented, most fans want to know how the divisions would align.
The football-only overhaul for the 136 FBS schools would look like this: two conferences, with the top 72 programs — primarily from the Power Five — forming the new “Power 12 Conference,” organized into 12 six-team divisions based on geography.
The remaining 64 programs — mostly the current Group of Five — would play in the “Group of 8 Conference.”
Similar to the structure of European football leagues, the top teams from the Group of 8 would be eligible for a “promotion” to the Power 12, though there wouldn’t be a relegation system for the bigger conference.
So, how would the schedule look? To provide more competitive matchups while preserving certain long-standing rivalries, the scheduling model would be based on geographical location and previous results. The Power 12 season, complete with multiple bye weeks, would span 21 weeks, kicking off in late August and running through early January.
Meanwhile, the playoffs would mirror the NFL, with division winners and Wild Card spots comprising the 24-team bracket and win/loss records determining postseason berths and seeding.
MORE: Simulate the College Football Season with CFN’s College Football Playoff Predictor
The CSFL would be run by a board representing all 136 schools, with one commissioner at the helm and smaller executive committees within each conference.
“Historically, the beauty of college football has been how many schools around the country were competing for the championship,” Clevland Browns owner and longtime Tennessee athletics booster Jimmy Haslam said in a statement from CST.
“We need to bring college football back to the broad, national model of its golden years in a system which fosters more competitive balance.”
As far as revenue is concerned, CST believes a consolidated league would allow “universities to fairly compensate players, create reasonable competitive balance, cover rising NIL costs and continue to underwrite other intercollegiate sports that generate less revenue, including women’s sports and the U.S. Olympic program.”
The plan proposes fairly equal revenue distribution within each conference, though top-performing schools would eventually see more incentives. Still, a staggering 94% of the revenue would go to Power 12 programs, leaving just 6% for the Group of 8.
The details have been outlined, but just how realistic is a College Football Super League? The original proposal was centered around a 2027 launch date, which was optimistic, to say the least.
CST met with the ACC board of directors in February, but their planned dinners with the Big Ten, SEC, and Big 12 all fell through due to the conferences not wanting to upset their current broadcast partners, namely ESPN and FOX.
For argument’s sake, let’s say every conference and school did buy in. They are locked into billion-dollar TV deals with ABC, FOX, NBC, and CBS, and the FBS just agreed to a six-year, $7.8 billion extension with ESPN for exclusive rights to the newly expanded College Football Playoff.
The Big Ten’s contract runs through the 2029-30 season, the Big 12’s through 2023-31, and the SEC’s through 2033-34. So, if the CSFL ever came to fruition, it likely wouldn’t happen until the 2030s.
College football, as we know it, is dead, but that doesn’t mean it can’t rise out of the ashes, improved and better suited for the new era.
Is a College Football Super League the answer? It may not be the best one, but the proposal pushes the sport toward much-needed sustainability — and it’s running out of time.
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