Blueprint for a post NCAA College football league
Most of us on here can agree that the ncaa is a joke that really no longer serves a beneficial purpose. There has been talk about the power 5 breaking off from the ncaa for over a year now. They are a sinking ship that refuses to admit that the iceberg (Supreme Court) took them under and there's no coming back. Harbaugh has his ways about him, but I have a hard time believing this has nothing to do with them being the laughingstock of the burger gate situation.
Either way, he's my wishful thinking for a post-ncaa College Football League.
Blueprint for the Future: The New League
The power 5 breaks off from the NCAA and consolidates into two conferences, the B1G and the SEC. Each conferences will be comprised of six 6-team pods. Each team plays the other five teams in their pod, one team from each of the other pods, and two non-conference games.
1. Composition: The new league will consist of 72 teams, divided into two elite conferences - the Big Ten and the SEC.
Big Ten Pods:
Great Lakes Pod: Michigan, Ohio State, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Northwestern, Illinois
Central Pod: Indiana, Purdue, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Notre Dame
Carolina Pod: North Carolina, NC State, Duke, Wake Forest, Clemson, Georgia Tech
Atlantic Coast Pod: Florida State, Miami (FL), Virginia Tech, Virginia, Maryland, Rutgers
Northeastern Pod: Boston College, Syracuse, Temple, Pittsburgh, Penn State, Cincinnati
Pacific Pod: USC, UCLA, California, Stanford, Washington, Oregon
SEC Divisions:
Texas Pod: Texas, Texas A&M, Baylor, TCU, Texas Tech, Houston
Central Plains Pod: Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, LSU, Arkansas, SMU, Ole Miss
Deep South Division:
Southeast Pod: Florida, UCF, Georgia, South Carolina, Vanderbilt, Tennessee
Appalachian Pod: Mississippi State, Alabama, Auburn, Louisville, West Virginia, Kentucky
Northwest & Central Division:
Mountain West Pod: Colorado, San Diego State, Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, BYU
Central Heartland Pod: Missouri, Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, Oregon State, Washington State
2. Financial Structure:
- Player Compensation: Each player will be treated as an employee, similar to the Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs) and Graduate Student Research Assistants (GSRAs) at institutions like the University of Michigan. GSI's departments pay their tuition, salary, and benefits. The athletic department would do the same for the players if they are employees. Football players bring in much more value than the majority, if not all, graduate student employees but aren't allowed to even get nearly the same compensation.
- Player employment contracts would give both the player and schools stability and security while reducing transfer frequency.
- Players will receive a minimum salary of $54,720, with walk-ons receiving $15,808.
- Salary Cap: Instituting a salary cap of $15.4 million, based on TV revenues and aligned with NFL's salary cap methodology, ensures financial discipline while guaranteeing fair compensation.
- Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL): Players can pursue individual sponsorships. However, funds from NIL collectives will be funneled to the athletic department to support non-revenue sports athletes, preserving the integrity of donations and ensuring the overall health of college sports.
3. Competition Structure:
- Conference Playoffs: Each conference will host a 6-team playoff, with two play-in games. Winners of the play-in games will face the top seeds in the semi-final bowl games.
- Bowl Games:
- Big Ten: Semi-finals - Orange Bowl and Fiesta Bowl.
- Championship - Rose Bowl.
- SEC: Semi-finals - Cotton Bowl and Peach Bowl.
- Championship - Sugar Bowl.
- Big Ten: Semi-finals - Orange Bowl and Fiesta Bowl.
- National Championship: The Rose Bowl (B1G) champion plays the Sugar Bowl (SEC) Champion in the College Football Championship game.
October 20th, 2023 at 11:59 PM ^
No Tide pod?
October 21st, 2023 at 12:17 AM ^
challenge accepted
October 21st, 2023 at 12:39 AM ^
Roll tide pod
October 21st, 2023 at 1:38 AM ^
No Pad Thai Pod?
October 21st, 2023 at 11:26 AM ^
Only on laundry day.
October 21st, 2023 at 12:16 AM ^
What...no more vendettas? Please tell me the compromised referee system will still be around? SEC Bagmen, surely they will fuel St. Nick's genius still.
October 21st, 2023 at 12:16 AM ^
Username obnoxiously checks out
October 21st, 2023 at 12:36 AM ^
This reminds me of when CFA challenged NCAA in court over the limited (3X per year) number of times of CFB TV appearances in mid 1980s. CFA won, which opened the door to more TV and eventually all games on TV.
October 21st, 2023 at 8:48 AM ^
Thank God for Chic Fil A’s viscous litigation on behalf of this matter
October 21st, 2023 at 12:38 AM ^
I appreciate the effort, but if there is a breakaway football league it needs to be about half the size of what you have here.
Nobody really wants the Northwesterns and Vanderbilts to be grandfathered in. Fans, and especially networks, want good matchups every week.
October 21st, 2023 at 1:09 AM ^
I thought about that. I figured there could be a promotion-relegation system down the line. If football were to break off the flood gates will open. The pods are with non-revenue sports travel in mind when they follow suit.
October 21st, 2023 at 6:08 AM ^
As long as there's recruiting, and not drafting, a relegation system can't happen. It's an immediate death sentence that a program will never escape from. Especially not in the transfer portal era.
October 21st, 2023 at 7:18 AM ^
A recruiting system is exactly how European soccer works and they are the model for relegation
October 21st, 2023 at 7:52 AM ^
The percentage of teams that get relegated within two years of promotion kinda backs my point. Add in transfer portal and unequal NIL and lower teams will always be picked bone dry. And with the roster sizes being what they are, building a sustainable foundation of talent would be near impossible.
Case in point, only 7 or so clubs have won the Premier League since 1992.
October 21st, 2023 at 1:41 AM ^
Nobody really wants the Northwesterns and Vanderbilts to be grandfathered in. Fans, and especially networks, want good matchups every week.
Then who's going to finish in last place? If you have nothing but blueblood schools, they'll cannibalize each other. Fans will get tired of that fast.
October 21st, 2023 at 5:50 AM ^
Watching overpowered blueblood programs pound small market teams for decades in a row is not what keeps fans coming.
October 21st, 2023 at 7:55 AM ^
It certainly isn't what turns them away.
October 21st, 2023 at 11:17 AM ^
I can't imagine blueblood fans and programs wouldn't have buyers' remorse when their year from hell season, which used to be 5-7 or 6-6, is now 1-11 or 2-10.
October 21st, 2023 at 12:49 AM ^
The TV networks run everything so I could see a world where when the current TV deals expire, the 20-30 biggest brands just say screw the NCAA and make their own super league
October 21st, 2023 at 1:07 AM ^
I think you should spend a little more time to think about this vs send such a brief outline of your vision. /s
Seriously though, this works (ish) for football (which imo is the only sport that should break free). Everything else should really stay connected to a NCAA like institution given the platform and revenues (particularly March madness). And the Olympic sports deserve such a platform. A middle ground exists but it’ll take cojones to make it real.
Thanks OP.
October 21st, 2023 at 3:04 AM ^
So you're just going to cut out half the teams right off the bat? I like it!
Now cut off 1/2 more (fuck MSU btw) & I will like it twice as much.
October 21st, 2023 at 4:44 AM ^
You’ve got way too many teams. Mid market teams like Oklahoma state and Pitt are not getting picked up. Here’s where I think we’ll be in 15 years: 2 leagues (B10 and SEC) playing exclusively within their league. Cooperation for post season play. Further down the road, a merger occurs and the small market teams (like Northwestern and MSU) are ejected (approx 2060, 20-30 teams). Here’s a pre-final merger B10 (est. 2028). Divisions are for fun, don’t think they’ll actually occur.
BFL (B1G F-ing League):
West: USC, UCLA, Oregon, Wash, Stanford, Utah (or Colorado?)
Plains: Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Nebraska, Notre Dame
Lakes: Michigan, MSU, Indiana, Purdue, OSU, Northwestern
East: Rutgers, Maryland, Penn State, Clemson, UNC, FSU
SEC
With Texas and Oklahoma, generally stands pat, as it already has a very high median team market value. Fights with B10 over high value ACC teams. In the B10 outcome above, SEC takes Miami. Maybe Virginia Tech too?
October 21st, 2023 at 5:45 AM ^
Make a hierarchy out of all teams, like British soccer.
- Premier League, 64 teams. The best teams.
- Also-run League, 64 teams
- Sparties League, other worse teams
Every year, 16 teams would be dropped from to Premier to Also-run. 16 teams would be promoted to Premier league. etc..
No salary cap - it’s not going to be useful at all.
October 21st, 2023 at 6:24 AM ^
This is what you choose to do on a Friday Night?
October 21st, 2023 at 6:35 AM ^
While true, no one likes the NCAA, there has to be a governing body for college athletics. So either the NCAA isn’t going anywhere, or the league creates another NCAA to keep everything fair.
October 21st, 2023 at 1:28 PM ^
The new league would establish their own governing body like any other professional league where there is a commissioner and owners/governors. Except the schools will have athletic directors in the role of owners/governors.
The reason why the in person scouting rule was in place was because it was cost prohibitive for smaller schools. The spirit of the law isn’t applicable to power 5 schools. I’m sure there are hundreds of others like that too.
The new governing body will be a function of schools
October 21st, 2023 at 8:19 AM ^
Impressive amount of thought underlying this.
October 21st, 2023 at 10:11 AM ^
You put a lot of thought into this, and it looks good. I don't, however; see Warde accepting leaving the NCAA for another "league".
October 21st, 2023 at 10:55 AM ^
The only thing that doesn't track in this for me is a salary cap.
As a Michigan fan I'm perfectly fine with there being Haves and Have-Nots.
October 21st, 2023 at 12:02 PM ^
If there is a new world, it's what the TV networks want, not what the Big Ten or SEC want. I think they'd prefer a Premier League model of promotion and relegation than a conference model.
October 21st, 2023 at 3:23 PM ^
Some serious holes here, as regards employment and restraint of trade:
1. If football players become employees of the schools, then the schools will lose the ability to make them enroll as students because that's restraint of trade. There's no job relationship between being a linebacker and taking English Lit. GSIs and GSRAs can be required to be enrolled because of the link between the job they do and the education they need to do it. The employment of pure professionals to replace student-athletes will also go against the charters of most of these schools, which restrict universities to activities that support the research and teaching missions of the schools. School are not allowed (because state-supported and non-profit) to engage in activities that compete with private enterprises (e.g. the UofM can run an auto repair shop to repair university vehicles but cannot offer to repair vehicles owned by the public).
2. There cannot be a pay cap because that's also a restraint of trade. The NFL can get away with it because of their antitrust exemption that allows them to force players into the NFLPA and thus the collective bargaining agreement. The universities cannot collude to restrict the ability of players to earn what they can get in the market because the universities do not have an antitrust exemption and almost certainly couldn't get one.
The "athletes as employees" model looks non-viable to me.
October 21st, 2023 at 7:05 PM ^
Part of me wants to defer to you because you sound correct. The other part of me knows that employees can enroll as students. I’m 100% positive about that. I have a family member who was a university employee, at another school, and got 100% tuition as part of their benefits package. We set up a scholarship fund for to cover non-tuition costs for employees that decide to enroll as students. So that part I’m positive about.
2. Again, what you’re saying make sense and I’m not going to pretend that I know the ins and outs of anti-trust law. The ncaa has been on the wrong side of anti-trust for over 100 years and paying players is a step towards correcting that. The Alston case was big in that regard.
I don’t think that the salary cap itself restricts how much a player can get paid to their relative market value. Under that cap a single player can get up to $10 million if everyone else on the team gets the minimum. I’m not sure if there’s a player who has a market value of $10M/ year. Obviously, I’m just a guy with a keyboard and some wishful thoughts.
I think what you’ve mentioned could be worked around especially given the ncaa’s history and the Alston decision.
What you’re saying makes sense and you seem to know a lot about this, I just don’t agree 100% and the parts I don’t agree with could possibly be worked around
October 21st, 2023 at 11:08 PM ^
1. The argument isn't that employees CAN enroll as students, the argument is that the schools cannot REQUIRE their employees to enroll as students unless that student status is directly related to their job. What professional linebacker wants to spend time in class that he could better spend becoming a better (and thus higher-paid) linebacker?
1a. Does the school charter allow them to run professional football teams?
2. Alston was about the compensation student-athletes could receive beyond the scholarships. The NCAA tried to limit that by restricting stipends and not allowing NIL deals with players, only schools. Those two elements have been ruled violations of the Sherman antitrust act.
If there is a salary cap imposed on teams (and thus players) it cannot help but repress the compensation of the players (else why do it?). That's another violation of the Sherman Act.
October 21st, 2023 at 3:44 PM ^
Way too many schools. New league doesn’t have to be more than 30ish. Trim the SDSs, UCFs, etc. The blue bloods should leave the BIG and SEC and create a new league. Only way to leave behind the Northwesterns and Vandys.