College Football conferences, such as the Big 12 and the ACC, are looking into the possibility of cutting out the middleman and bringing in more money to everyone in the sport, while the SEC and the Big Ten are saying, “Thanks, but no thanks. We are just fine where we are.”
Presidents and chancellors from the Big 12 and a portion of the ACC will meet in December to view formal presentations of two proposed college football postseasons. This was first reported by CBS Sports.
However, leaders from the SEC and Big Ten are reportedly not interested and they like the current structure of the College Football Playoff, which right now could have as many as four teams each in this year’s 12-team playoff.
“I’ve studied it a little bit and I come back to, I don’t want to dumb down the Southeastern Conference to be a part of some ‘super league’ notion with 70 teams that some people speculate would happen,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey told the “Triple Option” podcast last month. “They want to be us, and that’s on them to figure it out, not on me to bring myself back to Earth.”
Sankey is talking about “Project Rudy.” The 70-team structure would seemingly exclude the bottom tier of the FBS, which would be funded by private equity firm Smash Capital. The project would include $9 million infused into a system that would expand the college football postseason, change scheduling and feature tiered revenue distribution.
“I have yet to see a single thing in any plan that contains things that we couldn’t do ourselves and do with our colleagues,” Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti said last month.
The other proposal the “Power 2” is not interested in hearing about is the Super League, which was first reported by the Athletic. This idea is to take the top 80 schools and create a league that would be similar to the NFL model.
Next month’s meeting came about because Big 12 Presidents are very interested in the proposals, as are some of the presidents and chancellors in the ACC. But, again, unless the SEC and Big Ten show some kind of interest, these talks will be nothing more than just…talks.
The SEC and the Big Ten Presidents were invited to the meeting, but so far no one from either conference has accepted the invitation.
“It’s disappointing they’re poo-pooing it,” North Carolina AD Bubba Cunningham said to CBS Sports. “Even if you attend the meeting and participated and decided it wasn’t for you, that would be at least to me a better thing to do. But just to dismiss it out of hand is frustrating.”
Once again, it is the SEC and Big Ten wanting to control the situation and keep their grip on the revenue for major college football for years to come.