@bucketgetter It certainly has, but it was a legitimate fear and should be for some programs. Hell, there were basketball only outlets that wanted to move football voluntarily to the MAC or G6. They would have me on their live show or zoom with viewers and they would legit ask whether or not IU football should drop down a level. It was irritating.
However, I do not think a "Super League" is going to happen and it's just a buzz word to get people's attention. You can't cut out 1/2 the FBS and nobody in the P4 is going to sign on for relegation (it's too big a risk). If the schools wanted to break away from the NCAA it would have happened already.
CFB really needs realignment back to conferences based on geography. I am currently reading Bill Connelly's new book Forward Progress and he likens College Football to NASCAR. I am not a NASCAR expert and not even really a fan, but it seems like a good comp. NASCAR had a very loyal fan base that was geographically centered in the southeast. NASCAR tried to cater to the casual fans and moved races from hotbed tracks to big cities and it tanked. They created a playoff that was/is hard to understand and they took for granted that the loyal fans will always be loyal fans. They were wrong and paid the price.
CFB is on a similar track. They are taking out what the die-hard fan wants and catering to the casual fan. I don't think the die hards want a super league. I want to see the regional rivalries, a playoff that keeps the regular season the best there is and I want the FunBelt and MACtion and Pac-12 After Dark
@thehoosierhuddle I was formerly a NASCAR fan. They truly did lose their way and it's alienated nearly all of their once-loyal fans. All of college sports is on a similar path. I've not heard a single person say they are happy with the current state of things.
I don't get why sports leagues don't all go by geography. They act like doing so would destroy rivalries but bigger rivalries would likely emerge if teams played those that were closer more often as fans could more easily travel to more games.
NFL would be super easy...and we could stop pretending the Colts are in the south lol.
Anyway. Get some more teams and we could do Big Ten North, Big Ten East, Big Ten West and Big Ten South and base it on location rather than some arbitrary split.
@hurryinghoosiers Expansion isn't the answer. They need to contract conferences.
I like the idea of more conferences, smaller and geographically focused. Maybe something with an alignment like this?
Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for. - Seamus Heaney, Irish poet and likely Hoosier basketball fan.
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@tammany I totally understand the reluctance to have Congress step into college football in a big way, but I do believe it needs an anti-trust exemption in order to properly evolve into a viable ongoing concern.
Anti-trust exemption is what allows professional leagues to establish salary caps (usually tied into revenue), establish rules for transfer (whether by trade or free agency), tampering, etc
It's my opinion having some set of ENFORCEABLE salary cap, transfer, and tampering (players and coaches) rules are foundational needs for the long term viability of college football.
Not saying Congress should actually set those rules - but giving an entity (and I don't think the NCAA is necessarily the right entity) the ability to legal authority to create and enforce the rules of the league is necessary in my opinion.
Related to the original topic, the NCAA is too arbitrary as it tries to cling to relevance. In some ways, I hope they actually come after IU as I assume at that point, the B1G leads the charge to leave the NCAA. I assume the SEC would gladly join that exodus and of course the other schools wanting to play Big Boy Football would drop the NCAA in a flash.
College football needs some limited Congressional help - but let's keep that limited.
Congress just needs to rubber-stamp what the colleges, administrators & athletes put together....so that courts in states like California & Oregon can't F everything up. Congress ideally would have NO real input. They need to have a major weeks long meeting to get it together.
Congress just needs to rubber-stamp what the colleges, administrators & athletes put together....so that courts in states like California & Oregon can't F everything up. Congress ideally would have NO real input. They need to have a major weeks long meeting to get it together.
Colleges, administrators & athletes putting something together? Sounds like collective bargaining.
@hurryinghoosiers Expansion isn't the answer. They need to contract conferences.
Doubt we will see the conferences contract but having 4 divisions in the conference might be an effective way of accomplishing the next best thing
@dht Right. I keep blabbing about collective bargaining because that is a typical path to an anti-trust exemption.
The other way is for congress to just grant an anti-trust exemption with no CBA, which is part of what the SCORE Act proposes.
I'd like some entity to have real control over CFB like you lay out, I just struggle to see how it happens. I don't think the SCORE Act or something like it passes, and I also think schools don't want to collectively bargain due to the cost.
If a CFB super league is ever formed that might be the path this takes. Probably happens in early 2030's when the B1G and SEC TV deals are up for negotiation. It would be a ~60-70 team league and at that point something can be structured with an anti-trust exemption that gives some new entity real rules enforcement power. I dunno.
I think for a lot of schools, getting to a CBA and organization with anti-trust exemption provides a measure of desired financial stability. If a CBA is enacted for college football and basketball, it basically caps how much schools would have to pay for their roster - so basically a fairly fixed target. If its tied into revenue, then it likely gradually increases every year, but ostensibly stays a fair fixed percentage of total revenue. Not sure if things head down this path, whether schools would want a hard cap (like the NFL) or softer cap (like the NBA) - but a huge, rapidly growing expense at least comes under control.
There are several other things that need to be fixed (at least in my opinion), not the least of which is tampering - both for players AND coaches along with determining playoff teams by human opinion instead of fixed standards based on wins and losses.
Right now, you have 4 Power conferences (but really 2) advocating what is best for their respective conferences, even if not necessarily best for the sport itself. Playoff spots are determined by human polls / committee which then leads to unappetizing scheduling. We can't even fathom an NFL where playoff spots are decided upon in a big room, some teams play 17 games against NFL opponents and some teams play 14 NFL teams, a couple college teams and maybe a HS team in early November - but this is what we accept as fans of college football.
A lot to see happen these next 3-5 years for sure.
@hurryinghoosiers Expansion isn't the answer. They need to contract conferences.
I think this is what will happen. Whatever the eventual number of programs playing the highest level of college football is (personally I think its somewhere between 40-48 in some kind of super league or P2) there will be some line where the value each P4 school + Notre Dame brings is drawn and those above the line will form that league and those below won't.
IU did an amazing job making sure it will be included in any iteration of a P2 (expanded B1G and SEC adding in most desirable teams left in the B12 and ACC) or brand new super league.
As a long time Cal fan that almost saw us relegated to exile when the Pac12 collapsed a couple years ago, I can only hope Cal does what it takes to become an "IU-like" story in the next 3 years or I am sure my alma mater will be left out of the Big Boy room when that time comes.
@dht Yea. My guess is collective bargaining will cost schools a lot — players will become employees and get insurance and retirement, plus they will push for the highest cap possible, and right now college is paying a lower % of revenue than other pro leagues. I think the result will be far more expensive than what schools pay now.
As you said, we’ll see.
