College football super league

[HuskerGarrett]

 

[Mavsker]

ngl feels nice being right in the center

 

[LoudHogRider]

1-11

 

[Kaladin]

I wish the FBS teams would tell the NCAA to go eat shit and then just create one league with regional conferences, a large playoff, and some kind of non conference scheduling system.

 

[lee_carvallo_12]

1-11

curious who you had the one win over?

 

[Jim14510]

curious who you had the one win over?

Penn St

 

[Kaladin]

curious who you had the one win over?

probably alabama

 

[Kaladin]

did they just put us in the middle to troll everyone

 

[lee_carvallo_12]

Penn St

well, Luke and the boys did kick their teeth in last year, didn't they?

 

[Kaladin]

Read the replies. Suck my dick Wisconsin fans

 

[Alum-Ni]

CFN has a similar setup

What If There Was A College Football Super League?: Daily Cavalcade

What if college football took the powerhouse European football club lead and created a Super League of top programs? How would it possibly look? College Football Daily Cavalcade: What if college fo…

collegefootballnews.com

 

[SoCal_Corn]

ngl feels nice being right in the center

We are the Paul Lynde of College Football

 

[LoudHogRider]

curious who you had the one win over?

Kid Diddlers in Happy Valley.

 

[LoudHogRider]

We are the Paul Lynde of College Football

Such a good game show. They should resurrect that one again.

 

[That SOB Van Owen]

Penn St

I was going to say 0-12 but yeah you’re right we can beat Penn State.

 

[thE kErnEl]

I was going to say 0-12 but yeah you’re right we can beat Penn State.

Or Michigan

 

[Tyneb23]

 

[SoCal_Corn]

the HOLE article

Staples: College football Super League? Alabama, Notre Dame, Nebraska and a lot of hurt feelings (Texas A&M, Tennessee)​

By Andy Staples 5h ago

233

Unlike most of my college football writing brethren, I don’t follow international soccer. But even I couldn’t escape the Super League news that exploded Sunday. Twelve of the world’s most popular clubs banded together — with the hope of adding three more — to thumb their nose at decades of tradition in search of a massive media rights payday.
It sounded so juicy. It sounded so explosive. It sounded so . . . familiar.
What is the Super League if not the nuclear-option version of college sports realignment from a decade ago? In college sports, schools consolidated into leagues to maintain a brighter line between the haves and have-nots. Leagues that added schools did so with the goal of adding to their cable television footprints so more people would pay higher per-month subscriber fees for their conference networks. The Super League, meanwhile, would be akin to the 15 most popular football — though not necessarily the most recently accomplished — programs deciding to play games only against one another and outside the confines of their own conferences. The Super League* is a massive cash grab, and the media rights could make Arsenal, Manchester United, Barcelona, Inter Milan, Real Madrid and company half a billion dollars richer (each) on an annual basis. The founding clubs intend to split about $4.5 billion in seed money for signing on.
*The Super League may not come to pass because much of soccer’s power structure has united against it. There are threats of teams being banned from their current leagues and players being banned by FIFA from playing for their countries in international competition. And like the Power 5 leagues occasionally threatening to leave the NCAA, this might just be a ploy to get better deals for these clubs under the current structure.
The college football numbers wouldn’t be so mind-boggling, but they’d still be huge. The 15 programs would split a pot of media rights that would absolutely be worth more than any single league’s and probably more than, say, the Big Ten and College Football Playoff rights combined. Monday morning, I texted a TV consultant the list of 15 schools I’m about to share with you and asked if that football rights package would be worth $1 billion a year. The response?
“That’s all? ”
The consultant texted back to explain that such an arrangement probably could fetch closer to $1.5 billion a year and maybe more. Schools that currently make between $30 million and $55 million from their conference’s media rights deals would stand to make $100 million in addition to other revenue such as NCAA basketball tournament distribution and rights fees for other sports. (Unlike the Super League, which presumes the teams would continue to play in their current home leagues, it would seem unlikely college football teams could stay in their conferences and do this because American football teams just can’t play that many games.)
I know what you’re thinking: Stop giving them ideas.
But I had to game this out to understand why soccer fans have raged at this concept, which, on the surface, sounds like a bunch of matches between clubs that a lot of people would like to watch play one another. Translated to college football, the backlash made far more sense to my American brain.
I started by making the list of the 15 programs that likely would be included in a college football Super League. I chose the 15 that I thought would deliver the most viewers across the widest swath of football-loving geography. Success factored in, but it wasn’t the primary driver. This is the part that drives people crazy about the current system of Power 5 and Group of 5 conferences, and it would only be magnified here.
Here are the 15 programs, listed in alphabetical order. Prepare for many, many hurt feelings.
Alabama
Auburn
Clemson
Florida
Georgia
LSU
Michigan
Nebraska
Notre Dame
Ohio State
Oklahoma
Oregon
Penn State
wHorns
USC
It is here that you might note that Nebraska is 16-28 the past four seasons. This is true, but Nebraska also remains a brand name (though it won’t be for much longer if the Cornhuskers don’t turn things around soon) that would draw eyeballs while playing against the other teams on this list. It also gives the league a foothold in a large geographic region that, while not heavily populated, is extremely passionate about football. This might be the equivalent of Tottenham Hotspur, which hasn’t won a trophy of any kind since the Carling Cup in 2008. At least Nebraska won the Big 12 North in 2009 and the Big Ten Legends Division title in 2012.
You might also note that Texas A&M, with a massive, passionate fan base in a heavily populated, football-crazy state, was left off the list. That was the most difficult omission, and it happened because the league needed at least one more team on the West Coast to ensure the league didn’t essentially ignore an entire region of the country. (More on this in real life later.) Had Texas A&M won anything of consequence in the past 20 years, the Aggies might have been impossible to leave out of the league. But Oregon, which established itself as one of the coolest programs in college football and has played in two national title games since 2010, got the spot the Aggies would have gotten.

Oregon quarterback Marcus Mariota, left, and Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston meet after the College Football Playoff semifinal at the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1, 2015. The Ducks won 59-20. (Ric Tapia / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Let’s be honest. Texas A&M fans shouldn’t be the only furious ones here. Fans of Wisconsin, Michigan State, Florida State, Cockeye, Oklahoma State, Kansas State, Tennessee*, Virginia Tech and Washington should be incensed. They are also loyal, passionate and create incredible college football atmospheres. Plus, they all have enjoyed at least a measure of on-field success in the past 20 years. Heck, Florida State has won a national title and Michigan State and Washington have made the College Football Playoff.
*Ten years ago, Tennessee makes this list instead of Clemson.
But tough decisions must be made when creating an exclusive club that can essentially print money. All the schools on that list understand that because they’re currently on the comfy side of the velvet rope. And some of the programs on that side haven’t exactly done much to earn their continued place in the VIP.


This is a great example. Vanderbilt rakes in cash by virtue of being in the right place at the right time when the SEC formed in 1932 and by being smart enough to stay in the SEC when founding members Georgia Tech and Tulane dropped out.
What makes the soccer fans so angry about the Super League is the same thing that frustrates a lot of college football fan bases. No one gets kicked out of the Power 5 leagues for failing to perform. But in European soccer, teams that don’t perform do get kicked out of their leagues thanks to a system of relegation and promotion. The Super League seeks to subvert that system, and in that way, it is copying college football. Once you’re in the club, you’re in. Unlike the UEFA Champions League, a similar concept that actually requires wins on the pitch to make the pool, the founding members of the Super League would be in regardless of their success in their home leagues. And here’s what makes the deal so great for them. If they got relegated to a lesser league back home, they’d lose the top-league media rights money, but they’d still be making Super League rights money. In practice, they’d always have enough to spend on players to ensure they’d never get relegated.
Again, I realize this sounds awfully familiar — just without the locker room waterfalls, nap pods and antitrust suits from the players who, in lieu of over-the-table cash payment, receive scholarships and access to locker room waterfalls and nap pods.
Soccer fans are angry because this plan stabs at the heart of what they believe makes their sport special. If you win, you can climb the rungs of the sport. If you lose, you get sent back and a winner from the lower division takes your place. This would essentially be like Boise State replacing Kansas in the Big 12. The Super League would, in effect, make it possible for the clubs with the biggest reach to game that system. It would consolidate the power and interest in a few select clubs . . .
. . . which would make it a lot more like college football.
The catch is that if those soccer fans were given a truth serum, they’d probably watch the hell out of the Super League matches. Ditto for college football fans. If those 15 schools played only one another, we’d watch. At least most of us would.
The “most of us” is the problem, though. Many fans would drop away and never come back. College football’s challenge in the next few years is to find a way to keep satisfying the fans who grow weary of the same six or so programs running the sport. The four-team College Football Playoff essentially has ignored teams west of the Rockies for the past four seasons. That could be fixed easily, but the people who run the sport have to be willing to realize it. An eight-team playoff would still be the most exclusive tournament in American sports (thus keeping the regular season valuable), but guaranteeing spots for every Power 5 champ and the highest-ranked Group of 5 champ would keep millions of more fans engaged through the entire season.
The economic underpinnings of college football make legislating parity nearly impossible. There won’t be a draft or a collective bargaining agreement. Attempts to legislate parity have actually made the issues worse and probably helped cause the current lopsidedness. Those rules robbed athletes for decades of money they should have been allowed to take — and soon will be thanks to coming Name, Image and Likeness laws that will force the schools to allow it — while enriching coaches and administrators at a select few schools. Perhaps the coming transfer and economic freedom for athletes will help even out the distribution of talent and give more teams a chance to compete for Playoff berths.
With any luck, those will be the happy accidents that come from the moves that should have been made long ago. The concern that these will allow the best programs to further consolidate the most talent doesn’t take into account how these decisions actually work. Yes, Alabama creates the most draft picks and wins the most national titles. For these reasons, it makes perfect sense why Alabama would collect the best new talent each year. But Alabama can only play 11 on offense and 11 on defense at a time. A player who can transfer without sitting out a year might see a bigger opportunity elsewhere, especially if being the best player at the new school is worth more money now than being a backup in Tuscaloosa. Or maybe the player makes that decision in high school. The 20th-rated player on Alabama or Ohio State’s recruiting board might be the highest-rated player in an Arkansas class. Soon, being the best player at Arkansas — home to a devoted fan base that envelops the entire state — might be worth a lot of money. So what if No. 20 from that Alabama or Ohio State recruiting board decides to go to Arkansas, forcing the more powerful brand to take No. 26 on its list instead? If that happens over and over, then things get interesting. Because that doesn’t just help Arkansas. Let’s say the Razorbacks got that player instead of the Buttguys. That also helps Michigan, Penn State and Wisconsin.
But this only works if Arkansas fans think their team still has a chance and create the kind of audience that can make a popular player valuable to the market. Right now — in spite of everything that happened in 2018 and 2019 — Razorbacks fans still feel that way. And hopefully, they’ll keep feeling that way. As long as the fans of the schools outside the group that competes for Playoff berths every year still cares, then college football hasn’t completely devolved into the Super League. The game’s long-term health depends on ensuring those people keep caring.
(Top photo of Nebraska players carrying coach Tom Osborne off the field on Jan. 1, 1995, after the Cornhuskers defeated Miami 24-17 in the Orange Bowl for the national title: Doug Mills / Associated Press)

 

[Faux Sean Callahan]

1-11

Ya but we would be rich

 

[hothouse_corn]

Ya but we would be rich

That's kinda your thinking in how you run your RSS business, I guess.