Stewart Mandel and Andrew Marchand:
One league overseeing college football’s highest level. No more conferences as we’ve known them. Playoff berths being decided solely on the field. Promotion and relegation for smaller schools. Players being paid directly. NIL and the transfer portal, managed.
A group of influential leaders wants to make all this happen soon — and they are pitching it as the best way forward for a sport they believe needs saving.
Several college presidents, Roger Goodell’s primary lieutenant at the NFL and some of sports’ top executives have devised a plan — dubbed by outsiders as a “Super League” — to completely transform college football, those involved in the group “College Sports Tomorrow” told The Athletic. Although the plan has drawn skepticism from within the sport’s current institutions, the people behind the ideas believe they must be implemented.
“The current model for governing and managing college athletics is dead,” Syracuse chancellor Kent Syverud told The Athletic during an interview.
West Virginia president Gordon Gee added, “We are in an existential crisis.”
Syverud and Gee are part of CST, a 20-person group which also includes the NFL’s No. 2 executive Brian Rolapp, Philadelphia 76ers owner David Blitzer and lead organizer Len Perna of TurnkeyZRG, the search firm that places nearly all the top conference commissioners, including recently the Big Ten’s Tony Petitti.
More:
theathletic.com
One league overseeing college football’s highest level. No more conferences as we’ve known them. Playoff berths being decided solely on the field. Promotion and relegation for smaller schools. Players being paid directly. NIL and the transfer portal, managed.
A group of influential leaders wants to make all this happen soon — and they are pitching it as the best way forward for a sport they believe needs saving.
Several college presidents, Roger Goodell’s primary lieutenant at the NFL and some of sports’ top executives have devised a plan — dubbed by outsiders as a “Super League” — to completely transform college football, those involved in the group “College Sports Tomorrow” told The Athletic. Although the plan has drawn skepticism from within the sport’s current institutions, the people behind the ideas believe they must be implemented.
“The current model for governing and managing college athletics is dead,” Syracuse chancellor Kent Syverud told The Athletic during an interview.
West Virginia president Gordon Gee added, “We are in an existential crisis.”
Syverud and Gee are part of CST, a 20-person group which also includes the NFL’s No. 2 executive Brian Rolapp, Philadelphia 76ers owner David Blitzer and lead organizer Len Perna of TurnkeyZRG, the search firm that places nearly all the top conference commissioners, including recently the Big Ten’s Tony Petitti.
More:
Inside the CFB 'Super League' pitch some execs see as a way to save the sport
A group of influential sports leaders and college presidents are pitching a drastic change to the current CFB model as the best way forward.
theathletic.com
