Are we inching closer to that college football Super League?
The noises being made at the Southeastern Conference meetings sound like support for a breakaway from the NCAA…
Jim Alexander (OC Register) — Remember my suggestions that college football might someday be headed for a Super League concept, with promotion and relegation and a clear demarcation between the haves and the have-nots?
It’s creeping closer. And if the latest proposal for a 16-team College Football Playoff – along with the recent Southeastern Conference meetings – are any indication, it will be sooner rather than later. …
• We are already seeing the SEC and Big Ten, backed by ESPN and Fox, throwing their influence around with the proposal that those conferences between them would divvy up half of the automatic slots in a 16-team field. In fact, the SEC people are making noises about turning their conference championship weekend into a play-in round for their league’s third and fourth automatic qualifiers, and can we assume that the Big Ten will follow suit? …
• Meanwhile, the Big 12 and Atlantic Coast Conferences – third and fourth among “equals” – get two spots each. Notre Dame, with no reason now to ever join a conference for football, is seemingly assured of a spot if the Irish don’t trip over their own shoelaces. That leaves three at-large spots, including one token berth for whichever Group of Six team is highest ranked. …
• But wait: It gets crazier. The House v. NCAA settlement still hasn’t been approved yet, but programs from coast to coast are trying to figure out how to share whatever profits there might be with the athletes – or if there will be anything available to share, in the case of the coupon-clippers among the NCAA membership – while certain voices are pleading for Congress to give college athletics antitrust protection. …
• And now, this headline spied on the AL.com (Alabama News Group) website Thursday, quoting the SEC commissioner: “Greg Sankey: SEC prefers to remain in NCAA, but wants more power.” And this didn’t just come out of nowhere. Sankey told reporters covering the conference meetings: “I’ve shared with the decision-making working group that I have people in my room asking ‘Why are we still in the NCAA?’”
Bottom line: Sankey discussed a membership structure where the four autonomous conferences would stand alone. But given that the recent football proposal has created a schism and basically led administrators in the ACC and Big 12 to declare that they don’t trust those in the two larger conferences, how’s that supposed to work? Especially when a Big 12 athletic director, not for attribution, was quoted by Yahoo’s Ross Dellinger as saying of the football playoff concept, “I guess we’re going to war.”
• Oh, by the way, NCAA president Charlie Baker picked these moments to talk about the expansion of March Madness. If the NCAA tournament goes to 72 or 76 teams, how many will the two behemoth conferences demand? (Hint: There are 34 teams in those two conferences combined.) …
• And we thought the uproar over the future of the USC-Notre Dame football rivalry was loud. (Which it is, and which it should be.) But cheer up: Once everything shakes out, maybe the Trojans and Irish will wind up in the same Super League division.
Trust me. At this rate, it’s coming. …
ocregister.com
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