Earlier this week, we saw a group called College Sports Tomorrow unveil their proposal to streamline college football into a single, national league, which it would call the College Student Football League (CSFL).
“The new league would establish an independent, impartial entity to reorganize college football for the benefit of the 136 Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) schools and student athletes in all sports,” a release reads.
With issues like NIL, the transfer portal, revenue distribution, and television contracts pushing college football further and further away from other collegiate sports, it feels like an eventuality that something like this proposal is coming.
This “Super League” idea feels more like a pipe dream to most people, but it does have support from some notable decision-makers in the sport.
One such person is West Virginia President Gordon Gee, who co-authored a letter in the Chronicle of Higher Ed predicting the “implosion of the FBS” and even predicting the possibility of the Big Ten and SEC creating a 36-team “Super League” of their own.
“We are advocating for FBS presidents to make sure we are listening carefully to all options,” Gee and Syracuse chancellor Kent Syverud wrote. “For example, there is a new group called College Sports Tomorrow, composed of college and pro-sports executives who are embedded in higher education in various ways. CST has recommended reorganizing FBS into the College Student Football League, or CSFL, a single, unified college football league designed to secure the future of not only football, but all college sports.
“While we respect CST, this group itself is not the point. It’s their ideas, their principles, and the substance of their approach that we encourage FBS presidents to contemplate.”
The CSFL proposal from College Sports Tomorrow calls for the reorganization of college football by resorting the 136 FBS programs into two conferences. The “Power 12 Conference” would be made up of the top 72 teams, divided into a dozen six-team divisions. According to the proposal, the remaining 64 teams would make up the Group of 8 conference.
Here’s a look at the suggested Power 12 Conference and its divisions.
So, when would this sort of change happen in college football?
Well, if the CSFL proposal were to be adopted, it would require the NCAA and its member schools to sign off on it, and that would mean a total rebuild of the College Football Playoff structure.
The CFP is locked in with ESPN through 2031-32, so it’s likely it would have to be sometime after that. Plus, the new CSFL proposal would have a 24-team playoff field that includes division winners and wild card berths — not dissimilar to what we see in the NFL model.
If college football is going to be preserved, it’s likely that some sort of model like this will need to be adopted; with presidents and chancellors already hopping aboard this proposal, it could be a real possibility for the future.
“As university presidents, we need to get back in the game and take responsibility for our future,” the presidents wrote. “We can’t rely on commissioners or Congress to do this. More engagement, urgency, and leadership are needed from all of us to breathe new life into college sports and create a sustainable new model that is steeped in the cherished traditions we all want to preserve.”
