New League Model Intended to Grow FBS College Football and Adapt to a Transforming Legal and Political Landscape
October 1, 2024 (New York, NY) – College Sports Tomorrow (CST), a group of respected, influential and progressive leaders within higher education and sports, has proposed streamlining college football into a single, national league called the College Student Football League (CSFL). The new league would establish an independent, impartial entity to reorganize college football for the benefit of the 136 Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) schools and student-athletes in all sports.
The CSFL would apply only to football; other college sports would stay in their current conferences or return to their traditional, geographic conferences, reducing the need for other sports to travel cross-country. The CSFL would include all the current FBS schools in two conferences made up of geography-based divisions. The top 72 programs would compete in the Power 12 Conference with the remaining 64 schools facing off in a second conference, the Group of 8. The best eight schools in the Group of 8 would have the opportunity to “play up” into the upper tier the following season, enabling promotion without “relegation” of any of the Power 12 schools.
Centralized, results-based league scheduling, including non-division games played between schools with similar records from the prior season, would ensure more competitive matchups and allow more schools to stay in the hunt deeper into the season. It would also allow results on the field, not a committee, to determine playoff participation, which in turn would generate more fan engagement in more parts of the country all the way through the regular season and postseason. The College Football Playoff (CFP) would be folded into CST’s proposal so a single league could be charged with managing and growing college football at all 130+ FBS schools.
“The CSFL’s format is better for schools, student-athletes, fans and media partners because more schools will be in the hunt for the playoffs well into November, unlike under the current system in which most schools are out by October,” said Jimmy Haslam, longtime University of Tennessee philanthropist and owner of the Cleveland Browns and other sports teams. “Historically, the beauty of college football has been how many schools around the country were competing for the championship. We need to bring college football back to the broad, national model of its golden years in a system which fosters more competitive balance.” said Haslam.
The CSFL model would be economically advantageous and sustainable in the short- and long-term. Consolidating and centralizing college football allows greater revenue to flow into one unified league, enabling universities to fairly compensate players, create reasonable competitive balance, cover rising NIL costs and continue to underwrite other intercollegiate sports that generate less revenue, including women’s sports and the U.S. Olympic program.
The CSFL would directly compensate all student-athlete football players, not just the stars, and NIL and transfer portal rules would be the product of collective negotiations between the CSFL and an association representing football student-athletes. The CSFL supports legislation seeking a determination that student-athletes are NOT employees, but through collective bargaining, the CSFL would give players a voice in rules and economics while providing protection from antitrust claims via the “non-statutory labor exemption,” rather than through a formal, legislative antitrust exemption. This approach should provide a permanent solution to the myriad antitrust challenges plaguing college sports.
“The courts are forcing change in college sports, which presents an opportunity to reimagine college football so it works for everybody – all the schools, student-athletes, fans, media partners – and continues to support Team USA,” said Len Perna, CST Co-Founder and Chairman of TurnkeyZRG, the search firm that has placed many of the leaders in college sports. “With a potential players’ association, compensation policies would be developed through negotiations that balance economic opportunity for players with competitive balance.”
“University presidents must take responsibility for college athletics and be the architects of change rather than its victim,” said Gordon Gee, President of West Virginia University. “The current model is broken and heading toward a system with a few haves, and hundreds of schools struggling to compete. We will regret not fixing things now. We need a model that fixes college football’s structure and thereby preserves women’s sports and Olympic sports which are an integral part of the college experience for our students. The CFSL proposal attempts to address these and other issues and therefore deserves full discussion and consideration as we face the future of college athletics.”
“The CSFL would be owned and controlled solely by the member schools, each of which would own a percentage of this single league structure,” said Mark Abbott, CST Co-Founder, Executive in Residence at Georgetown University, and former President, Deputy Commissioner and Co-Founder of Major League Soccer (MLS). “Through this structure, the CSFL will be able to strategically create more value for student-athletes, schools and their athletic programs, fans and commercial partners,” said Abbott.
“We have experience with revenue-sharing models across the global landscape of sports and built a bespoke model specifically for college football. Our model incorporates a safety net, ensuring all schools are better off going forward, while simultaneously rewarding football programs that win, comply with the rules and attract viewership. Unequal revenue sharing only works if paired with collective bargaining. You can’t have one without the other,” said Scott Krase, Partner of Bolt Ventures.
CST is comprised of the following members and supportive ambassadors:
Members
Ambassadors
CONTACT
media@collegestudentfootballleague.com
SOCIAL MEDIA
X/Twitter: @TheCSFL
Facebook: @CollegeStudentFootballLeague
Instagram: @collegestudentfootballleague
LinkedIn: @college-student-football-league
TikTok: @thecsfl