VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: SU Chancellor Kent Syverud Backs College Football “Super League” Proposal
Austin Barach: Let’s move on to something bigger. Conference realignment, the transfer portal, and NIL. College football has seen a lot of change recently. It’s also the reason why SU chancellor Kent Syverud has thrown his support behind a proposal that would unify the major college football teams under one league. Peter Elliott spoke with two experts to understand what it means for the future of the sport.
Peter Elliott: The game is changing, and SU wants to help write the playbook for the future. Last month, Chancellor Kent Syverud attached his name to a proposal that could reshape college athletics as we know it. The idea? A college football super league that would do away with the conference framework and re-organize the top 72 Division I football programs into twelve groups based on geography. The proposal speaks to a growing unhappiness with the current system, amid endless conference realignment. Michael LeRoy is a sports law professor at the University of Illinois. He says it makes sense.
Michael LeRoy: I think the idea of a professional version of elite college football teams is inevitable.
Elliott: Syverud has made his discontent with the current landscape of collegiate athletics known. Earlier this year, he called it a, “dead man walking.”
LeRoy: I could not have said it better. They know what they’re looking at and call it for what it is. The NCAA just barely survived an antitrust lawsuit. Barely survived it. They can’t take another big hit.
Elliott: But while change may be coming, sports economist David Berri says that most fans will take their college football in whatever form it comes.
Berri: Nobody, no fans care about the conference. They care about the team, the team matters a lot to them. If you look at Oregon football right now, Oregon fans don’t care what conference they’re in. You know, they’re a top team in the country, Oregon fans are terribly happy.
Elliott: The question is: how will other fans feel. For NCC News, I’m Peter Elliott.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) — Amid endless conference realignment and significant legal challenges to the current makeup of college athletics, an idea to create a so-called college football “super league” has emerged.
It would do away with the conference framework and unify all 136 Division I football teams under one league. The proposal outlines a top tier of 72 schools, split into 12 divisions based on geography and natural rivalries. The other 64 schools would participate in a lower tier with the possibility of promotion to the top tier, similar to that of European soccer.
The College Student Football League was proposed by a group calling itself College Sports Tomorrow, made up of university officials and business leaders.
Syracuse University Chancellor Kent Syverud has signed on as an “ambassador.”
Syverud has made his discontent with the current landscape of collegiate athletics known before. Earlier this year, he told ESPN that the system is a, “dead man walking.”
“I could not have said it better,” said Michael LeRoy, a sports law professor at the University of Illinois. “They know what they’re looking at and call it for what it is. The NCAA just barely survived an antitrust lawsuit. Barely survived it. They can’t take another big hit.”
In May, the NCAA and the Power Five conferences settled a number of antitrust lawsuits, agreeing to pay roughly $2.8 billion in damages to current and former Division I athletes since 2016. The settlement also outlines a revenue-sharing model for schools to share as much as $23 million each year with its athletes.
In the proposal, Syracuse is situated in the “Mideast” division, grouped with old Big East rivals like Cincinnati, Rutgers, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Penn State, and West Virginia.
Syracuse University currently plays in an Atlantic Coast Conference that features two teams that border the Pacific Ocean — University of California, Berkeley and Stanford — and another in Dallas, Southern Methodist University.
“No fans care about the conference,” said David Berri, a professor of economics at Southern Utah University. “They care about the team, the team matters a lot to them. If you look at Oregon football right now, Oregon fans don’t care what conference they’re in. You know, they’re a top team in the country, Oregon fans are terribly happy.”
Still, the super league proposal is just that: a proposal, one that faces a long road to adoption.
Earlier this fall, a similar proposal backed by a venture capital and private equity firm called “Project Rudy” was also unveiled.
Either pitch would require cooperation with the NCAA and athletic conferences, each of which have their own television contracts and grants of rights.