CU and the CST “Super League”

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CU and the CST  “Super League”

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College football has no off-season.

If we’re not immersed in the week-to-week rise and fall of emotions from August to January, we are spending the rest of the calendar worried about recruiting, the Transfer Portal, and coaching staff changes.

The spring is supposed to be reserved for renewed hope for the upcoming campaign. Holes in the lineup being filled … new stars emerging … gleefully checking off presumed victories on the schedule.

With the constant upheaval in the sport, though, it’s hard for a CU fan to not look to the horizon with hope for success … and fear as to whether Colorado football will be relevant on the national stage when the 2020s draw to a close.

Colorado seemingly did a good job maneuvering in the latest round of realignment, finding a lifeboat in the revamped Big 12. But will being a part of the “Big Four” going forward going to be enough to guarantee CU a spot at the big boy table when the next round of restructuring takes place?

If the “College Sports Tomorrow” group has anything to say about it, CU’s future looks promising.

What is the CST, and what are they proposing?  

College Sports Tomorrow is 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.

College presidents and chancellors are included in the group, including West Virginia president Gordon Gee and Syracuse chancellor Kent Syverud (Gee also served as the president at both Colorado and Ohio State … Useless trivia department: My wife, an Ohio State alumna, and I both have diplomas with Gordon Gee’s signature on them).

The CST isn’t asking for much: Just a completely reworked system for college football.

They are trying to implement a drastically new system that would replace the NCAA and the College Football Playoff and potentially provide a solution for the avalanche of current and future lawsuits aimed at the business of the sport, plus the NIL and transfer portal issues that, they believe, have put college athletics as a whole in peril.

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.

The current CST outline would create a system that would have the top 70 programs — all members of the five former major conferences, plus Notre Dame and new ACC member SMU — as permanent members and encompass all 130-plus FBS universities.

The perpetual members would be in seven 10-team divisions, joined by an eighth division of teams that would be promoted from the second tier.

The 50-plus second-division teams would have the opportunity to compete their way into the upper division, creating a promotion system similar to the structure in European football leagues. The 70 permanent teams would never be in danger of moving down, while the second division would have the incentive of promotion and relegation.

The playoffs would not require a selection committee, as the eight division winners and eight wild cards from the top tier would go to the postseason. The wild-card spots would be determined by record and tiebreakers, much like the NFL.

How would the seven 10-team conferences be set up?

Welcome back, Big East and Southwest Conference!

While the CST hasn’t proposed any specific breakdowns, that hasn’t stopped writers from speculating.

In one model, there would be the restoration of the old Pac-10 (sans CU and Utah), as well as the return of the Big East, with Notre Dame joining the likes of Syracuse, Miami, and Pitt, and the resurrection of the Southwest Conference, with Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas returning to their roots.

Colorado would be part of a leftover conference, dubbed the “Frequent Flyer” conference, with the six old Big Eight schools not from the state of Oklahoma (CU, the Kansas schools, Nebraska, Iowa State, and Missouri) joined by Utah, BYU, UCF and … oddly enough, Northwestern.

Can it happen? 

As you might guess, there are many obstacles in the way of CST’s plan going into effect.

The theory behind the CST’s proposal is that, by uniting under one entity, College Sports Tomorrow could generate more money for the schools than the Big Ten, the SEC, the ACC, the Big 12, etc., produce on their own. There’s a reason the AFC East and NFC South do not compete against each other for TV dollars; the NFL makes more money selling the rights to all 32 teams at once.

But, the problem — what some argue is a fatal flaw — behind the idea is that College Sports Tomorrow is effectively trying to form the NFL in reverse, after it had been up and running for more than a century. If the Dallas Cowboys were paid $500 million a year to play 17 prime time games split between NBC, CBS, Fox and ESPN, and the Jacksonville Jaguars earned $50 million playing at 1 p.m. on the CW every Sunday, joining forces would sound like a great idea in Jacksonville, but would that fly in Dallas?

Probably not.

Put another way: The Big Ten and SEC are already making more money – way more money – than their little brothers in the ACC and the Big 12. Why would they take their larger share of the pie and divided it out among the schools and conferences they have spent the better part of the last two decades trying to crush?

Other issues … 

— Collective bargaining —

The CST would create one entity to negotiate with a prospective union that would represent the players on NIL, transfer portal and salary structure rules. This embrace of collective bargaining could allow it to avoid the antitrust issues that have limited the NCAA’s ability to enforce its own rules.

“The only way to solve the problem is to have a solution that is legally defensible, politically acceptable, commercially prudent and is able to strike a partnership with student athletes in a way that’s really good for them,” lead organizer Len Perna of TurnkeyZRG told The Athletic.

Unionizing the players is on the horizon, but there are still a multitude of hurdles which must be cleared before that can become a reality.

— Class action lawsuits — 

College administrators are particularly concerned about the House v. NCAA class-action suit in Northern California, seeking NIL revenue denied to athletes prior to 2021 rule changes. If the plaintiffs are successful, the NCAA and the power conferences could be on the hook for billions in damages. The House case is one of several potentially crippling federal antitrust suits related to athlete employment rights and NIL compensation.

“I really think conferences in the NCAA are at a very significant likelihood of going bankrupt in the near future because of the lawsuits, both the ones that are going to trial soon and those that will follow,” Syracuse chancellor Kent Syverud said.

How the NCAA, conferences, and individual schools navigate these waters will play a significant role in the future of the sport, and to date no one has a clear answer as to where the money will come from to settle – or pay off – these lawsuits.

— Title IX —

Even if CST can find a way to get the powers of college football to agree to a new structure, one with unions, NIL contracts, and salaried players, the specter of Title IX looms in the background.

If the conferences and the player’s union can come to some sort of arrangement on paying football players, what will happen with women’s tennis and golf? Will those scholarship athletes be entitled to equal salaries, in essence doubling the cost of every football scholarship?

Dare to Dream …

There will be a Super Conference in college football, and it will likely be in place before the end of the decade.

Will the University of Colorado be a part of it?

It’s hard to say. If the College Sports Tomorrow group has its way, the all-inclusive Super 70 will certainly include the Buffs.

But what if the new Super League has 48 teams, with several dozen “Power Four” conference schools relegated to second-tier status? Will the Big Ten keep the likes of Rutgers, Northwestern and Purdue as cannon fodder? Will the SEC finally ditch Vanderbilt, or keep the Commodores around as the next best thing to an in-season bye week? If so, is there enough room for the secondary powers in the ACC and Big 12 to find a seat at the table?

There is a growing number of disgruntled CU fans who are losing patience with Coach Prime and his unconventional methods, wondering out loud if the Buffs under Deion Sanders will have enough to become – and remain – relevant long enough to be a part of the next tsunami of realignment.

The reality, though, is that without Coach Prime, the Buffs were not even on the periphery of relevance nationally.

With Coach Prime, CU at least remains in the conversation.

For now, that’s all we can ask …

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This post, about the Spring Practices game, from the 2024 Season, is filed under Article.
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