The two biggest and most profitable conferences in college football are the SEC and the Big Ten. The SEC is the traditional powerhouse while the Big Ten is the rising power, producing the last three CFP champions, including defending champions Indiana. However, there are now rumors circling around that these two conferences might merge soon, creating a sort of “super league” that could leave smaller conferences in the dust.
Concerns for this “super league” even have politicians drawing concerns, as this would create unfair competition among the various conferences, with this SEC-Big Ten “super league” taking the lion’s share of NIL deals. Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz spoke with OutKick’s Trey Wallace regarding the possible merger and revealed that they have put forward a new bill to try to stop this from happening.
“There’s been a lot of discussion of the SEC and the Big Ten merging. This bill says they can’t merge. I think that’d be a disaster if you saw a super league,” he said.
Cruz added that the bill they put forward had provisions in this new bill, called the Protect College Sports Act. to deal with the rising costs schools are facing right now. He also noted that a “super league” would “destroy every other team in the country and will become too powerful, with the big schools having no competition on the national level, which would be bad for college athletics in general.
What Else Is On the Protect College Sports Act?
The Protect College Sports Act is a bipartisan bill that is supported by both Republicans and Democrats to deal with the new NIL era. This would not just deal with the hypothetical “super league,” but also a few other things, such as transfers and eligibility, with undergraduates getting one immediate transfer and any additional transfers would now require players sitting out an entire season.
There would now also be a compensation cap which would result in direct payments from schools to athletes becoming capped and legally shielded from court challenges. Conferences could sell their television rights collectively with pooled media rights, much like with the NFL, and there is now a mid-season coaching rule which prevents coaches from leaving midseason, as what happened with Lane Kiffin and Ole Miss.
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