How major college football teams could (and should) break from the NCAA

The first visible crack came on July 9, and it could be seen from space. The commissioners of the Power 5 conferences had spoken regularly through the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic. In their most recent conversations, they had batted around the idea of playing conference-only schedules in order to more easily standardize testing protocols. But they hadn’t decided together to go ahead with that idea.

The key word in that last sentence is “together.” On that Thursday in July, a few hours after a conversation in which nothing was revealed to the other commissioners, the Big Ten announced it was moving to a conference-only schedule for the 2020 season. No one disagreed with the idea in principle; after all, the SEC and Pac-12 wound up adopting the same policy for their 2020 seasons. The much bigger deal was the realization that swept across the conferences: We’re not in this together. It’s every league for itself.

This, more than anything, was the takeaway from the major college conferences’ response to the pandemic. This lack of cohesiveness was worst in the Football Bowl Subdivision, the 10-conference group with no NCAA-run championship to act as a tether or as a lever. In the other sports, the NCAA could postpone or cancel a championship and influence the conferences’ decisions. But the NCAA largely abdicated any control of football after its schools sued and won control of football television rights in a case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1984.

Though their methods of determining a national champion have been a constant subject of debate, the leagues managed an uneasy peace for decades — even in 2004 and 2010 and 2011 when some of the leagues were trying to eat the others. Then the stuff really hit the fan in 2020, and major college football was exposed as the rudderless ship it had always been.

But it doesn’t have to be. The schools can fix this if they want, and what better time than now?

College sports is about to undergo a paradigm shift, so there’s no better time to make structural changes. It’s time to press the reset button on college football, and here’s how to do it.

Step One: Create the organization and put someone in charge.

Before we dive into this, a request. Please feel free to not share that Google Doc in which you reimagine college football with four 16-team leagues at the top and four 16-team leagues underneath and an elaborate procedure for promotion and relegation. That’s fun to talk about in June, but it’s also never going to happen. Let’s meet reality on reality’s terms.

Doing that requires accepting a few things. The Power 5 leagues probably aren’t going to break away from the NCAA completely. The Power 5 teams probably aren’t going to break away from the Group of 5, either. Though Group of 5 leagues don’t like not having a real chance to compete for the national title — we’ll address that later — they do like the money generated by the College Football Playoff. Power 5 leagues and their network partners, meanwhile, do like the scheduling flexibility offered by the partnership with those leagues. Those two constituencies seem to want to stay together, so we’ll keep them together.

But they need a central governing structure, because they don’t have one at the moment. But they do already have the infrastructure to easily create one because all 10 FBS conferences and Notre Dame already work together to stage the College Football Playoff.

Through the years, the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate sports has introduced some pie-in-the-sky ideas that don’t mesh with the reality on the ground in college sports. But in December, the panel, which is made up of university leaders, private businesspeople and former government officials, made a fantastic recommendation. Instead of the overly simplistic suggestion that the major football-playing schools break away entirely from the NCAA, the commission advocated for the FBS conferences to leave the NCAA in football only and form their own governing body.

Ever heard of the National Collegiate Water Ski Association? You probably haven’t unless you’re a fan of Louisiana Lafayette and Louisiana Monroe, which might be the Alabama and Clemson of collegiate water skiing. (Alabama and Clemson, which also have teams, probably could argue accurately that they are the Alabama and Clemson of collegiate water skiing.) The NCAA doesn’t sponsor water skiing, so the schools that want to compete in Slalom and Trick had to form their own governing body.

This football association would be a similar concept, except it would get a lot more attention because major college football is a multibillion-dollar business. And because it is a multibillion-dollar business, it is effectively a different sport than the football for which the NCAA sponsors championships (FCS, Division II, Division III).

Instead of loosely organizing around a postseason format (the CFP), FBS schools would form a complete organization that would govern the sport, manage the postseason and enforce rules voted on by members. This organization would have a commissioner or president with the authority to make decisions for the good of the members. If this sounds a lot like the NCAA, it should. It would be exactly like the NCAA, except it would have actual power over major college football.

The Knight Commission proposed calling this new organization the National College Football Association. That is probably more likely to be selected than some of the names I’ve proposed for such an organization over the years. I’ve suggested Collegiate Athletics Select Hegemony (CASH) and League Of Outstanding Teams (LOOT). But these are, of course, the people who created a college football playoff and named it the College Football Playoff, so the moniker likely will be as dry as possible. Let’s go with The Football League.

The name would be boring, but the mission would be robust.

Other than certifying new bowl games, the only authority the NCAA has over the FBS now is rule creation (voted on by the schools) and rule enforcement (handled by NCAA staff and adjudicated by people from the schools). This is much different from basketball, where the television contract for the men’s tournament essentially funds the NCAA’s entire operation and where the NCAA office’s control over the tournament creates significant power.

It’s easy to imagine why the NCAA staff might not be so fired up to deal with football issues, especially those relating to rule enforcement. Here’s an analogy for the parents out there. Imagine your partner (the conferences) gets to hand out all the ice cream (TV revenue) and you’re the one (the NCAA) who always has to tell the kids when they’re banned from playing video games for a week (rule enforcement). That’s not a very satisfying existence. Nor is it a sustainable partnership. What’s in it for the employees at the NCAA, anyway? Football doesn’t make their organization any money. All it does is bring them negative attention because all they handle is the negative side. So why should they bother trying?

The new organization would follow a rulebook created by its members just like the NCAA does, but those members could shape the rules differently. Yes, FBS members can make their own rules within the NCAA now, but those tend to revolve more around playing rules or different recruiting calendars. Schools are loath to make big-picture rules for only one sport. That wouldn’t be as thorny of an issue anymore because the FBS schools would be creating rules for their own organization.

As for the commissioner, the authority of this person should fall somewhere between NCAA president Mark Emmert (probably not enough power) and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell (probably too much power). The schools and conferences aren’t going to agree to a system that takes away all their autonomy, nor should anyone want their autonomy stripped outright.

The conference-by-conference differences in college football are part of the appeal of the sport. Arguing about whether leagues should play a uniform number of conference games is a feature, not a bug. So the new organization wouldn’t necessarily mandate homogeneity from the top down. What it would do is provide a bespoke framework for the sport’s governance and step in during moments of crisis to provide leadership or settle disputes between conferences.

During the pandemic, The Football League’s commissioner would have kept everyone on the same page. Conferences wouldn’t have postponed too early and then reneged on that postponement (as the Big Ten and Pac-12 did) because the commissioner would have been there in early August to say “You don’t have to make that decision now. We’ll all make that decision together in a few weeks.” Sometimes, someone needs to be in charge. This organization would finally put someone in charge of major college football.

If you want to know what type of person might lead such an organization, come back tomorrow.

Now, let’s make some rules.

Step Two: Make regulations that will make money for everyone (including the players) and produce the fewest federal lawsuits.

The NCAA is getting ripped for delaying a vote on name, image and likeness rules that would allow athletes to make outside income even if that income is related to their fame from playing college sports. This delay came after the organization received a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice that the department will be watching closely as the NCAA makes these rules.

“Ultimately, the antitrust laws demand that college athletes, like everyone else in our free-market economy, benefit appropriately from competition,” wrote Makan Delrahim, assistant attorney general of the DOJ’s antitrust division. In other words, many of the “guardrails” that school, conference and NCAA leaders want to attach to these rules may ultimately violate the Sherman Act. Limitations on when athletes can receive the money and limitations on the reasons for which they can be paid might not pass muster.

I don’t think the delay in passing new rules is an attempt to keep from passing them at all. The leaders of college sports know Florida’s NIL law goes into effect July 1, and once it does, it would effectively become the law of the land unless a new federal law or new NCAA rules are passed first. I do think the delay is based on a fear of creating rules that will run afoul of the Justice Department, which will be under new management following Joe Biden’s inauguration. Plus, the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in Alston v. NCAA, in which the lower courts have ruled that the schools can’t make any rule that limits spending on educational expenses for athletes. It seems the people who run college sports want to know the particular dimensions of the playing field before they make the new rules, which is understandable. But they know the clock is ticking.

No matter the reason, any debate over the new rules will be a giant waste of time.

The new football governing body needs to take the advice I offered 10 years ago and create a player compensation structure that gives the schools what they really want (athletes aren’t employees) but ceases to worry about where the money comes from as long as it doesn’t come directly from the schools.

Want to avoid lawsuits? Want to avoid DOJ scrutiny? OK. Here are your compensation rules: The schools give scholarships and nothing more. Anyone except the schools can pay any athlete any amount of money for any (legal) reason.

That’s it.

The people in charge now want to ensure the new NIL rules keep players from being paid to attend a certain school. This is a foolish thing to worry about. Of course, players will be paid to attend certain schools when the new rules are in effect. Players are paid under the table to attend certain schools now. Recruiting is a competitive endeavor, and opening up more avenues to pay players — because keeping those avenues closed violates their basic rights — will make it even easier to funnel money to players to choose certain schools.

Even if the new rules had the “guardrails” the school officials want, it would be so difficult to prove why each player was paid that any rule regarding such payments would be enforced selectively and/or capriciously. So just don’t have a rule at all. Let the market work it out.

Could a booster under this system give a five-star high school quarterback a $1 million endorsement deal with the tacit agreement that the QB is getting the money because he signs with Big State? Absolutely. And when that QB gets beat out by the junior three-star (who just happens to be better because quarterback recruiting is a crapshoot), then that booster would be out $1 million and it would serve as a warning to anyone dumb enough to invest that kind of money in a 17-year-old.

Because the money isn’t coming from the schools, it shouldn’t affect any other sports. TV money continues to rise, and even if some money from private donations is shifted to giving deals to players, the bulk of that would still go to the schools, where the donation remains a tax deduction. Title IX isn’t an issue provided the schools make similar rules within the NCAA structure for the other sports. All athletes regardless of gender would be afforded the same opportunity to make money.

You might be saying, “But then only a few schools would get most of the best football recruits.” Yes. Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia, LSU and Clemson would get most of the best football recruits. Just like they do now.

But maybe, just maybe, the possibility of making more money during college by being the biggest fish in the pond would send a few of those recruits elsewhere. SMU was quite good at football when the Mustangs’ boosters paid recruits under the table. Perhaps moving this process above the table gets the Ponies back in the game. Or perhaps a five-star quarterback decides he wants to attach himself to Notre Dame’s national brand because it would increase the size of his platform and make him more money. The Fighting Irish are at their ceiling unless they can land a Trevor Lawrence or a Justin Fields. Maybe this would be the push that gets them to the same level as Clemson or Alabama.

Don’t like bowl opt-outs? Good, because they’re mostly gone once the best players can negotiate an appearance fee with a bowl sponsor. Want those three potential sixth-rounders to stay for their senior seasons because they’re the difference between eight wins and 10 wins? Good. Now they have a greater financial incentive to do so. It’s easy for many of us to say such players could raise their draft stock by staying another year, but they might have family situations that require them to try to make money now. If they can pocket enough cash through outside deals to keep themselves and their families afloat, then they might be willing to stay. And that might be better for everyone in the long run.

No matter whether anyone agrees to the plan being suggested here, the schools are going to have to shift to a system that allows players to make outside money because leaders from both parties in multiple states and in the federal government have decided that’s what’s going to happen. Once it does, the schools eventually will land on what I’ve just described because trying to create hoops for the players to jump through to get paid will lead only to legal challenges and spotty enforcement that enrages some fanbases and some school and conference officials. The Football League would be smarter to simply move to the logical conclusion rather than waste all that time and energy between Point A and the inevitable Point B.

This strategy also would allow for group licensing, which would pave the way for a new EA Sports college football video game. This is the only reason much of the public cares about this issue in the first place, so just give the people their damn video game and let players make some money from it. (Heck, most would be happy with a free copy.) And if that winds up allowing players to create a bargaining unit, so be it. Unionizing would be difficult with so many different state universities and varying state employment laws. But nothing could stop The Football League from negotiating with a representative group of players.

Having such a group would have come in handy this past summer. Most of the players wanted to play, and having their bargaining unit participate in and sign off on the creation of COVID-19 protocols probably would have made the return to play easier for risk-averse universities and improved the optics of the decision — which was simplistically viewed by many as a cash grab that didn’t take the players’ wishes into account.

Meanwhile, the one-time transfer exception that the NCAA also delayed passing — but will pass before the next school year begins — should be the policy in The Football League. Undergraduates may transfer once without sitting out a year. Graduates may transfer anywhere and play immediately even if they transferred as undergrads. The schools really, really don’t want the athletes to be considered employees, because that brings a host of thornier issues such as worker’s compensation into the mix. If they want to keep that distinction, they can’t try to hold them in one place with rules that resemble clauses in employment contracts.

Just because I think schools should stop worrying about who pays players doesn’t mean the schools shouldn’t make rules at all. If a school wants to protect its apparel contract by banning athletes from making deals with competing companies, it should be free to do so. A bunch of schools shouldn’t be allowed to get together and make a blanket rule. That would be collusion. But just as the New Orleans Saints don’t want Drew Brees wearing their marks when he shills for Advocare, schools should be allowed to protect their own brands just as any other entity would.

If the schools were willing to negotiate with some sort of athlete bargaining unit, it also might allow for a more uniform substance abuse policy within and across conferences. That may be difficult because state laws differ significantly and many of these schools are state-run institutions. But it would be easier than it is now.

Schools also should make strict gambling rules to keep the results of their games from being influenced. Granting athletes a broader way to make money should help on that front. It would be almost impossible to pay an NFL or NBA player to influence a point spread or over/under total because those athletes make so much money. The risk simply isn’t worth it. If college athletes can make more, then their risk/reward calculations change as well. But just in case, the penalties for players and coaches caught trying to fix games should be draconian. A lifetime ban on the first offense for either party should do the trick.

Plus, the schools still want the sport to be associated with the college experience, so it’s likely they’d make rules similar to the ones the NCAA has for their other sports to regulate academic issues. The Football League can have baseline academic standards and penalties for academic fraud and other malfeasance on that side. And don’t expect these rules to look much different than their NCAA counterparts. The schools are loath to create blanket rules that legislate curriculum.

The members of The Football League would have to decide how to enforce these rules, though. In the NCAA system, the enforcement staff serves as police and prosecutor while rotating groups of officials from the schools (the Committee on Infractions) serve as judge and jury. This tends to produce wildly inconsistent results that render precedent meaningless and only further confuse constituents and the public.

The Football League probably should employ its own in-house enforcement department, but the judge and jury aspects need to be tweaked. In the NFL, Goodell serves as judge and jury — which has produced its own brand of animus. Of course, these situations are bound to create some anger because they are ultimately disagreements; someone is bound to feel they got screwed. But the idea is to make the process feel as fair as possible. The NCAA has the right idea with the Committee on Infractions, but the group simply isn’t representative enough.

In The Football League, the commissioner’s office should serve as the judge. But unless the parties agree to arbitration provided over by the commissioner, cases should be decided by a jury that represents more constituencies than the COI does. Instead of only athletics officials, conference officials and school faculty, The Football League’s jury should include those people as well as coaches and players. The ground-level perspective from those people would help immensely.

Meanwhile, The Football League could create a group similar to the current NCAA Football Oversight Committee or the NFL’s Competition Committee to determine the playing rules. This wouldn’t feel much different than it does now, but it would allow coaches and athletic directors to focus on the game at the FBS level rather than trying to satisfy their colleagues at different levels. This might allow for a little more nuance in, say, the targeting rule without so much bureaucracy to go through to tweak it.

The Football League also could help schools with scheduling. If the 2020 season taught us anything, nonconference games don’t need to be scheduled 15 years in advance. BYU-Coastal Carolina was scheduled three days before it was played, and it was one of the best games of the season. One of the commissioner’s first decrees should be to declare all nonconference game contracts null and void. The schools should then agree to a rule that nonconference games can’t be scheduled more than two years in advance. (If schools have an annual non-conference rival, they can simply rubber stamp these deals every two years.)

This would allow schools to schedule games that more closely match where their teams are now from a competitive standpoint. It also would allow schools to create matchups their fans actually want to see. Post-pandemic, it’s going to take some work to convince season-ticket buyers to return. The best way to do that is with good games.

Step Three: Time to cut out the middlemen and take complete control of the postseason.

If you read Nicole Auerbach’s piece on how the commissioners feel about the College Football Playoff, then you know that while most agree it is better than the Bowl Championship Series, there is legitimate concern that the format is hurting interest in the game nationally. With the Pac-12 out of contention nearly every year, the Big 12 in contention only when Oklahoma is especially good and the Group of 5 not welcome in the Playoff at all, that’s a wide swath of fan bases that may check out once their team’s regular season ends.

The new organization can change that by expanding the Playoff. One Power 5 athletic director recently suggested to me a 12-team model that would include the champions of each Power Five league, the highest-ranked Group of Five champion and six at-large teams. The top four teams would each get a bye, creating a four-game opening weekend featuring teams that likely would all be competitive against one another. The big dogs, rested and playing at home, would enter the fray the following week.

This AD was quite convincing, but I still think that’s too big. Eight still feels like the best number, and while I’d love for it to simply be the best eight teams, I don’t think that satisfies the purpose of creating a format that keeps the entire country engaged. The best way to do that is to include the champs of each Power 5 league, the highest-ranked Group of 5 champ and two at-large teams. Those teams would then play quarterfinal games at the home stadiums of the higher-ranked teams followed by semifinals at the home stadiums of the higher-ranked teams. The tournament would culminate with a championship game at a predetermined neutral site. No bowl games would be included because you’d rather watch those games on campus anyway and because we’re going to radically reshape the bowl system so the schools get all of the money.

Had that system been in place this past season, this is how the bracket would have looked:

8 Oregon at 1 Alabama
7 Cincinnati at 2 Clemson
6 Oklahoma at 3 Ohio State
5 Texas A&M at 4 Notre Dame

And here’s how it would have looked after the 2019 season:

8 Memphis at 1 LSU
7 Baylor at 2 Ohio State
6 Oregon at 3 Clemson
5 Georgia at 4 Oklahoma

Who wouldn’t want to watch those games? What the people who keep arguing against an expanded playoff don’t seem to understand is that while postseason tournaments usually end with the best team winning, finding the best team isn’t the ultimate mission. The mission is to create a bunch of fun, high-stakes games that people want to watch and crown a champion at the end. This would do that, and people would watch. It also would keep more fans engaged throughout the season. At the top of the rankings, teams would fight for home-field advantage. Further down, teams would fight to make the field. Conference title games could become crucibles as teams that might otherwise have no chance of making the Playoff try to upset teams that could get knocked out with a loss.

You’re probably still wondering about that bowl system revamp. Here’s how that would work. Tell all the bowls that there will be no next contract. Tell ESPN that no teams will be sent to the bowls that the network currently owns when those contracts expire. The Football League now owns the entirety of the college football postseason, and the media rights are for sale.

ESPN, Fox, CBS and anyone else who might want to televise college football will be welcome to bid on a package of postseason games, and multiple packages will be sold to the highest bidders. The Playoff obviously will be the premium package. But other tiers will be available. If the schools decide that only teams that finish .500 or better should be allowed to play in postseason games, then that is their prerogative. But I would suggest just letting everyone play in one and creating 61 games beneath the Playoff. If Disney/ESPN would like to make a godfather offer to keep the entire postseason, The Football League’s commissioner is standing by. But it will be very, very expensive.

How would those games be staged? The Football League would rent the venue and sign up the sponsors. The city of Pasadena, Calif., would be offered a fair sum to rent the Rose Bowl, and the organization would place the best Big Ten and Pac-12 teams that didn’t make the Playoff in that game, which will always kick off around 2 p.m. local time on whatever day it’s played. The Georgia World Congress Center Authority, which is operated by Atlanta Falcons’ owner Arthur Blank’s company, would be offered market price to use Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Atlanta-based Chick-fil-A likely would happily throw in some money to sponsor that game. To the viewer, it would look no different than the Peach Bowl. It might even still be called the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl. But more of the money would flow to the schools, which would be under no obligation to pay an outside party for giant blocs of seats. In fact, they’d keep all the gate revenue.

How would the games beneath the Playoff be populated? By The Football League. Having conferences tied to games is how you get South Carolina fans schlepping to Tampa repeatedly for the Outback Bowl even though they’d really like to go to Nashville or New Orleans every once in a while. All of the FBS schools would own all of the games, so they’d have the ultimate flexibility when making matchups. Games would be made to prioritize television viewership first and in-person attendance second. If there are two coaches who hate one another because they used to coach in the same league, that’s a game. If USC and Texas played a classic non-conference game a few years ago and everybody wants to see them play again, that’s a game. This would create variety for teams and fans. It would create more exciting games for the television viewer. And it would make more money for the schools. Unless you have a closet full of garish blazers, you win.

Step Four: Looking ahead to the future.

The idea behind centralizing the leadership of major college football is to create a structure that won’t fall apart when disaster strikes. But that leadership also should be looking forward to keep the sport healthy.

And here’s where the leadership should be looking: A single-seller situation.

I’m forever grateful to television consultant Chris Bevilacqua for sitting me down 11 years ago and explaining two things: How the television industry works and why it costs so much more to buy the TV rights to an NFL game than it costs to buy the rights to a college football game. One reason the NFL makes more money is simple: More people watch it. But not that many more. The reason the NFL gets even more of a premium is it is the lone seller of NFL football. So it can charge more.

Now, there are multiple sellers of premium college football. There are the 10 FBS conferences, Notre Dame, BYU and the other independents. The Big Ten and SEC command the highest price. The ACC and the Big 12 are in the next tier. The Pac-12 is next. It goes down from there. Perhaps the Big Ten and the SEC won’t want to sacrifice their revenue advantage, and if they don’t, that’s their right. (They could still keep their own conference networks even in the single-seller scenario. Those would be separate packages.)

Again, the idea behind this organization isn’t to strip these leagues of their uniqueness or their autonomy. But if all of FBS football were sold as one product to multiple networks, it would command a higher price than it does now because the FBS football organization would control the supply.

At the moment, ESPN owns all the ACC’s rights. Within three years, ESPN will own all of the SEC’s rights. Perhaps the Big Ten will do an all-in deal with Fox when its rights come up for sale in a few years. These will be the most lucrative deals those leagues can get under the current structure, but leagues retreating to their own channels will be bad for the sport. Former Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany understood this. He didn’t like ESPN much, but he made sure to sell some games to ESPN because he wanted people talking about the Big Ten on ESPN. The SEC may as well not exist to Fox, and that isn’t good for Fox or for the SEC.

The better arrangement would be packages created by The Football League and sold across the spectrum so every league has a presence on every network. Of course, the leagues will have plenty of time to decide if they want to do this. The SEC’s ESPN deals run through the 2033 season. The ACC’s deal with ESPN runs through the end of the 2035-36 school year. So no one needs to rush on this.

But this is a plan a new generation of commissioners should start discussing — with guidance from The Football League’s commissioner, of course. If this is going to be a 100-year relationship, it’s best to start planning for the long term.

(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; Photos: Todd Kirkland, Mark Wallheiser, Streeter Lecka, Joe Robbins, John Korduner, Juan Salas, Brian Rothmuller / Getty Images)