Ascher Marks

The idea of a Super League in college football has been thrust to the forefront of discussions surrounding the sport. The Congressional hearings last month heard people saying that the Big Ten and SEC plan to break away from the rest of the sport to form a Super League, a claim both leagues aggressively denied.

However, to act like there have been no discussions about a Super League behind the scenes would be disingenuous. The revenue potential for the major programs cannot be ignored, especially when compared to the NFL’s network deals. At the end of the day, money will ultimately determine the direction of college football. The question right now, however, is: What could a new college football landscape look like?

The consensus first step in making any model like this a reality was leaving the NCAA umbrella. Breaking away allows the schools to collectively bargain with football players. Football generating the most revenue and those athletes getting the largest NIL deals has separated those programs from the rest of their athletic departments.

“You can’t go to the table with the starting quarterback at Texas and the lacrosse player,” Trey Wallace of Outkick Sports said. “That’s why you have to get outside of the NCAA realm and set up your own guidelines and rules.”

The importance of those guidelines is creating a standard for NIL spending. Right now, the NCAA cannot keep up with the number of deals, resulting in a blurry definition of the rules currently set in place.

“Every NIL contract has to go through NIL Go and has to be approved,” Brad Crawford of CBS Sports said. “There’s a backlog of like 10,000 different deals across all sports, so I’m trying to figure out which of these the NCAA is actually looking at.”

“There’s going to have to be collective bargaining and employee status,” Eric Olson of the Associated Press said when talking about the direction of NIL. Calling football players “employees” would have sounded taboo a decade ago when amateur status and education were considered more important.

“When was the last time you heard about an athlete being academically ineligible?” Olson asked. “It just doesn’t happen anymore.”

This reality allows for the ability to move on to a new structure. One that networks would be willing to pay for. TV deals are already lucrative, but having all the top programs playing each other makes bigger paydays possible.

“They want big games, and they want the best games,” Olson said. “There would be a ton of TV involvement in getting that up and running.”

Schools would also be happy to re-negotiate their deals with networks. Wallace explained that the conferences are still tied into their current contracts despite how they feel about them.

“You’re making an NFL light,” Bill Bender of The Sporting News described it. Creating any form of a Super League makes the sport more national like the NFL rather than regional like the conferences used to be, but that’s what makes it appealing according to Bender.

“The Big Ten is already on it because they have a coast-to-coast league,” he said. “If you divided it into three six-team divisions it’d be pretty cool, and the SEC, if you added two more teams, would be similar.”

Another benefit to limiting the number of teams and new TV deals is reworking the schedule. The frustration among coaches is that the season runs too deep into January. Not only does this hurt the sport by having to compete with the NFL playoffs, but coaches currently must manage the transfer portal during playoff runs.

“They’re down to do whatever with college football as we’re not playing the Natty on Jan. 28,” Crawford said of his discussions with coaches. “Teams are trying to compete for a playoff spot while they’re game-planning and they’re trying to fill out their roster.”

ESPN currently owns the College Football Playoff, so it gets to make the rules and schedule. The creation of a Super League allows the schools to take back some of the control of the calendar in negotiations with the networks.

As good as a Super League can sound, it does not come without pushback. The current system has been around for decades and created a certain mindset among fans. The top-tier programs in question have created a standard for themselves and their fans.

“Ohio St., for example, they like to go home happy from eight or nine of these games,” Bender said. “[They] haven’t lost more than two games since 2011, so it’s that balance of do you really want to play an NFL-type schedule?”

Mike DeCourcy of The Sporting News is one of the most adamant voices against the formation of a Super League. He discussed that the root of his stance is that it is not as beneficial as it sounds.

DeCourcy would go on to explain that there are people within the major conferences that understand a major move like separation may not be as financially beneficial as it sounds. The people making these decisions for the Big Ten and SEC must weigh the potential viewership lost because of who gets left out. Bill Bender echoed that concern.

“I think one of the things that would be hard is that you’re alienating two-thirds of the country,” Bender said. “Right now, there is the illusion of a National Championship for 138 schools.”

The NFL also creates that illusion that Bender is referring to, and that league has dominated television ratings for over a decade. It had 83 of the top 100 most viewed telecasts in the U.S. last year. Bender’s description of “NFL light” makes a new-look college football sound immensely profitable.

Regardless of stance on whether a Super League is beneficial or not, one thing that is agreed upon is that money will sway these decisions. If the major networks come with enough money when the current deals are up, schools may have no choice but to sign up for a new league.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they had those conversations just to see,” DeCourcy said when asked about the Big Ten and SEC’s future negotiations. They are not yet at the point to have formal discussions with multiple years left on current deals, but there is potential for that to happen in the near future.