The annual Alabama-Auburn game will not be one of the SEC’s most heated rivalries, but rather a battle in the Mid-South region of College Sports Tomorrow’s new collegiate football league. Kentucky, Louisville, Tennessee and Vanderbilt complete the six groups. getty Images
The college football ecosystem is fundamentally broken.
Expansion strategies by the Big Ten and SEC have thrust the sport into three years of constant restructuring. The College Football Playoff’s new 12-team format has barely been dusted off yet, but there’s already talk of rejigging its composition. And with no governing body governing the sport, the overall state of chaos remains despite continued investment and intrigue in the product.
One group aims to stabilize everything.
College Sports Tomorrow, a group of thought leaders in and around the college sports industry, this week announced plans to create what will be called the College Student Football League (CSFL).
CST’s vision focuses on realigning college football into two leagues. One is a 72-school league primarily along Power Five lines, and the other is a second tier of 64 programs focused on the current Group of Five. The top 72 schools are divided into 12 conferences based on geography, and the top eight programs in the lower-tier “Group of 8” qualify for promotion to the “Power 12” each year.
“It’s very complicated,” said Jimmy Haslam, owner of the Cleveland Browns and a key stakeholder in the CST effort. “There’s no easy answer (to fix college football) that you can just write on a whiteboard…(but) I think our model…is the right way to go.”
The group, led by TurnkeyZRG Chairman Len Perna, includes Simplebet co-founder and CEO Chris Bevilacqua, former MLS deputy commissioner Mark Abbott, co-founder and co-managing partner of Harris Blitzer Sports & Comprised of prominent industry leaders including David Blitzer. Entertainment (HBSE).
Athletic directors Danny White (Tennessee State), Bubba Cunningham (North Carolina State), and Kirby Hocutt (Texas Tech University), as well as West Virginia President Gordon Gee and Syracuse Chancellor Kent Sivrud. He is participating in the initiative as an ambassador. Illinois AD Josh Whitman was also part of the group, but had to leave due to time constraints related to his recent appointment as president of the NCAA’s Division I Council.
College Sports Tomorrow does not currently employ consultants, nor are any parties paid for their efforts.
“We still don’t have 60,000 people coming to our chemistry lectures. We tried, but it didn’t work,” Gee said jokingly. “The point is that college athletics was a vehicle to unify campuses and to unify higher education. At this point it’s disruptive and we need to get back to being the unifier of it.”
On paper, the CSFL is the most complete college football-centric reform proposal to date. But they will face real challenges in efforts that could functionally abolish the current model, untangle the myriad media rights agreements, and link large corporations and private equity to public universities and their football programs. .
How realistic is it? Officials spoke to Sports Business Journal to explain the details and potential issues that could take a long time to make it happen.
“This is like Democrats and Republicans talking about trying to create a bipartisan bill,” Bevilacqua said. “It’s going to take time, but ultimately I believe it’s the right thing to do to bring this all together and serve everyone’s interests, not just the interests of a few.”
Tomorrow’s college sports
Financial models and media rights forecasting
The proliferation of media rights deals is costing schools billions of dollars — at least that’s how CST sees it.
Conferences have long created their own separate media rights agreements. The Big Ten leads Fox, CBS and NBC with a combined annual revenue of about $1.1 billion, but the SEC and ESPN’s new contracts will pay them about $710 million annually. The CFP’s recent extension is also worth about $1.3 billion annually.
Meanwhile, the NBA recently struck a deal that will pay it approximately $6.9 billion annually across ESPN’s “A” package, NBC/Peacock’s “B” package and Amazon’s “C” package.
Perna cited a “very conservative” pro forma for media rights, which is expected to increase revenue by $2 billion by 2032, and predicted continued growth (exact details of the pro forma formula). was made private).
“What they’re able to do by being involved with the NFL and the NBA is leverage their entire schedule with media companies and technology companies to maximize the money they can get with the way college football is run,” Haslam said. , is also part owner of the Milwaukee Bucks. “(College football) has the AFC South negotiating their contracts, the NFC West negotiating their contracts, and then instead of one organization negotiating everything, another organization negotiates the playoffs and the Super Bowl. It will become something.”
Bevilacqua added, “College football far outstrips the NBA on a national network basis and far outstrips the NBA in consumption. But the NBA, by its structure, gets more value from its media partners. This It comes down to a structural issue.”
Beyond media rights, CST’s plan calls for 94% of league-wide revenue to go to the top leagues and to be distributed unevenly based on a variety of factors. The remaining 6% is distributed to lower tier programs.
SEC and Big Ten schools would also be offered a preferred return of 30% from the 94% cap from 2032 to 2036 (15% for each member).
“We did this because we wanted to build a model where all the schools (72 schools in the top conferences) were more profitable than they are now,” Perna said. “To do that, we had to prioritize benefiting those two leagues, because they both now have high salaries.”
Tomorrow’s college sports
What if I pay players?
Another important cog in this proposal is collective bargaining.
The House settlement is still under discussion, but if approved, it would allow schools to share about $20 million in revenue directly with college athletes. This type of additional budgetary space without additional revenue generation poses a significant financial dilemma for sectors seeking to remain competitive.
CST leaders support a non-employee designation that would allow soccer players to bargain collectively. The model proposed by the group calls for the creation of a players’ association as well as a cap.
Documents shared on CST’s website outline the structure under which CST will operate its commercial operations and act as financial advisor to CSFL. The Group License NIL will be paid through a future named players’ association and will ultimately be paid to the players. Broadcast NIL is also shared directly with players.
The CST proposal also hinges on whether revenue sharing and collective bargaining are both part of the model, rather than one or the other. In other words, the proposed revenue sharing structure cannot be separated from the player partnership (CBA).
“In the case of college football, we believe (players) should have a voice through collective bargaining,” Abbott said. “We are acutely aware that college sports are not professional sports, and that college sports have a unique educational mission that professional sports do not have, but we believe that the idea of collective bargaining is the way (move forward). I believe that it is.”
What are the target dates and possible complications?
The latest media rights deal, combined with the CFP’s recent contract extension with ESPN, will likely keep the conference in place until the early 2030s, when most FBS league contracts expire.
However, College Sports Tomorrow has put together a transition plan that could be implemented from 2027 to 2031. This includes withdrawing football from each conference through disenfranchisement and reforming it into a collegiate football league.
Despite other current realities, that in itself is a major challenge.
Big Ten and SEC leaders met in Nashville this week to discuss a variety of issues facing college sports. This includes a future CFP format that could reserve a significant number of slots in the field for the SEC and Big Ten. These conversations and recent collaborations between leagues have led to many voices in the college athletics world wary of integration.
When contacted by SBJ, both leagues declined to comment on the CST proposal.
“I don’t want to discount the Southeastern Conference as part of the 70-team Super League concept that some people are speculating is going to be,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said this week on the podcast “The Triple Option.” ” he said. “They want to be us. It’s their responsibility to figure that out, not me to bring them back to Earth.”
Perna said of his efforts that “there was communication with the commissioner,” but declined to name them when asked if there had been any discussions with Sankey or Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti. .
“Our job is to spread these ideas into society,” Perna said. “So if the commissioners want to meet with us, we will meet with them.”
