After the House v. NCAA Settlement: Is a 'super league' college football realignment's inevitable final form?
A new chapter in college athletics has begun ... but the story is far from finished. This summer's landmark House v. NCAA settlement cracked open the door to revenue sharing and ushered in sweeping reforms, but even a multibillion-dollar agreement can't escape turbulence. Legal challenges are already mounting, Congress is inching closer to direct involvement, and the sport's power brokers are bracing for another round of seismic decisions as key media deals -- including that involving the College Football Playoff -- near expiration in the early 2030s.
Using the House settlement's 10-year timeline as a guiding framework, CBS Sports spoke with dozens of stakeholders to explore what the future of college athletics might look like by 2035. Part 3 of this four-part series examines private equity's push into college athletics and its pitch to create a new super league featuring a select group of college football programs.
Check out the rest of the series here: Part 1 | Part 2
Seven years ago, a billionaire investor identified an opportunity to unlock new revenue streams by consolidating college football's biggest brands into a single "super league".
The idea of creating value through a new league comprising the sport's top 20 programs seemed feasible in a fragmented landscape. College football, long shaped by disjointed conference affiliations and media deals that varied in length, value and broadcast partners, stood out as one of the few properties that still consistently delivered large live audiences as traditional media shed viewers.
In theory, the billionaire socialized the concept of a super league -- with several billion dollars in front-end investment and the promise of bigger paydays -- to attract major schools and lure media networks hungry for viewership, according to people familiar with the discussions who spoke to CBS Sports on the condition of anonymity. Partnering with the Big Ten and SEC to hand-pick teams for a sport-specific league would be difficult, but not entirely impossible, those sources said this summer.
The time to strike had arrived.
College sports were on the verge of a major shakeup. At that point, just before 2020, the relative calm offered a clear runway for a bold new business model. Player compensation seemed possible through name, image and likeness deals, but it had not yet materialized -- nor had it been imagined that NIL would evolve so quickly into a vehicle for pay-for-play. More importantly, conference realignment had quieted since the early 2010s, and few (if any) signs of unrest existed behind the scenes, with FOX and ESPN firmly backing the Big Ten and SEC, respectively.
Then, the bottom fell out.
NIL was legalized under the NCAA's umbrella. Conference expansion went into overdrive when Texas and Oklahoma shocked the industry in 2020 by announcing a move to the SEC. The Big Ten and Big 12 followed suit by raiding the Pac-12. In the end, the Pac-12 collapsed, leaving only Oregon State and Washington State to attempt a rebuild of the West Coast's only power conference.
In a single year, the landscape shifted. The Big Ten and SEC had effectively formed their own versions of a super league. The billionaire's vision, once pitched to industry leaders, died quietly in a presentation deck, sources told CBS Sports.
Five years later, the idea is resurfacing -- and it may reshape college football again within the next decade.
New investors have entered the conversation. Two private equity-backed efforts, "College Sports Tomorrow" and "Project Rudy," are exploring ways to consolidate the sport's biggest brands into a standalone super league. The financial strain of impending revenue sharing with athletes -- combined with internal tensions among schools and conferences -- has added urgency. Meanwhile, disputes continue over postseason formats and rule-making.
"That's what the super league and private equity have glommed on to, the inefficiency in our current system," Mountain West commissioner Gloria Nevarez told CBS Sports. "Individual contracts, conferences negotiating different contracts that are competitive with each other. Under one umbrella, you would be working collectively."
The pitch: a more efficient, centralized structure with greater leadership and the potential to generate billions in new revenue.
But any such model would face a major legal obstacle.
"But that would require an antitrust exemption," Nevarez said.
That exemption -- long sought by the NCAA -- could resolve a range of legal issues involving player eligibility, economic freedom, and bundled media rights. While the NCAA and power conferences have spent millions lobbying for federal protections, progress is slow. The SCORE Act, however, is advancing in Congress and could provide the breakthrough.
Still, the lack of legislation hasn't stopped multiple parties from testing the waters.
According to CBS Sports, several ACC schools remain in contact with Smash Capital, a private equity firm that proposed a 70-team league in 2023 with a $9 billion upfront investment. The plan would eliminate matchups against Group of Five and FCS teams, expand the playoff, and generate at least $15 billion in revenue over the first 12 years, according to sources who reviewed documents.
Smash Capital did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Today, Project Rudy remains the only super league concept still being actively pitched to schools. Others have already folded.
One such plan -- the "College Student Football League" -- was scrapped in January, according to lead organizer Len Perna of TurnkeyZRG. That proposal would have split all 136 FBS programs into two tiers: 72 schools in 12 divisions, and a secondary group of 64 schools in eight divisions. It included a 24-team playoff, NIL restrictions and scholarship transfer limits.
"They want to be us, and that's on them to figure out,"SEC commissioner Gregg Sankey
Conversations around Project Rudy have slowed in recent months but remain ongoing with top schools in the ACC and Big 12, sources told CBS Sports.
"It's such a cerebral thing right now," a high-ranking power-conference executive told CBS Sports. "It's on everyone's mind, but everyone in the industry views that coming from someone else on the outside. There's no one really working on it who is in college football right now other than there's an existential threat of the Big Ten and SEC picking up their balling and saying, 'It's just us.'"
Indeed, the SEC and Big Ten -- the two wealthiest leagues -- hold the most power and have little interest in ceding it.
"They want to be us, and that's on them to figure out," SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said in October. "Not on me to bring myself back to earth,"
"I have yet to see a single thing in any plan that contains things that we couldn't do ourselves and do with our [Power Four] colleagues," Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti said in October.
A super league that excludes half the FBS is also a political longshot. Unlike the NFL, college sports do not enjoy an antitrust exemption. The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, which allows the NFL to sell its media rights collectively, doesn't apply to college programs.
Some in Washington -- including Texas Tech megabooster Cody Campbell, who was recently appointed to Donald Trump's sports commission -- want to change that. If successful, it could give conferences legal cover to bundle media rights and challenge the Big Ten and SEC's dominance.
"You can't ambush the government," said Patrick Crakes, a business media consultant and former FOX Sports executive. "That's the thing that's going to stop this. I've always maintained that one of the risks in investing in college sports is you're dealing with all the peculiarities of one of the most important qualitative assets in every state's portfolio -- the state universities and athletic departments, plus the federal government. Our system is designed for them not to align, so you can have a diversity of things for people. That's the framework."
Public sentiment may present another hurdle. Imagine a blueblood like Alabama or Michigan entering a super league playoff with a 7–5 record -- similar to an NFL wild-card team.
"You know what's going to be a byproduct of a super league?" said former Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby. "There's going to be a bunch of traditional winners that are going to be traditional losers. It's a zero-sum game. You take 40 schools and get a big TV contract, there's going to be 20 (teams) with a losing record at the end of the year and they're not going to like it."
Even so, money remains the ultimate motivator -- and schools are being pushed to consider moves once viewed as extreme.
Clemson and Florida State have explored exit strategies from the ACC over the past three years, prompting legal challenges and, ultimately, a settlement involving the league's grant of rights. The conference has since amended its revenue distribution model, allowing schools that generate the most TV interest -- such as Clemson and FSU -- to receive a larger share.
Buried in the new deal is something more consequential: an escape clause.
The amended agreement allows schools to leave for a football-only conference at half the usual exit fee -- $75 million or 50% of the standard penalty, whichever is greater -- if six or more members exit together.
In other words, the foundation for a breakaway league may already exist.
ACC commissioner Jim Phillips told CBS Sports in June that he opposes any football-only model, even one involving all four power conferences. Breaking away from the NCAA, he argued, would mean abandoning core structures like medical research, officiating, rules enforcement and academic oversight.
"I don't know that anyone can accurately predict what's going to happen. That's certainly not the desired outcome," Phillips said. "… You absolutely, positively have to look at what's best for your school and league, but everybody in this enterprise also has some responsibility to look at the greater good and what it means for 500,000 student-athletes across multiple divisions."
So far, many schools and conferences have balked at the high returns demanded by private equity -- as much as 30%, according to CBS Sports -- even as the $20.5 million revenue-sharing cap looms.
Bowlsby, now a leading voice for the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, said even blue bloods would struggle in a super league.
"What happens when instead of having 125 football-playing institutions we have 65?" Bowlsby said. "Does anybody care? A lot of swimming, wrestling, track and field sports are going to go away.
"... I just don't see where the money comes from and that includes the bottom half of the Big 12 and the bottom half of the ACC, too. Those guys don't have millions of dollars in discretionary money they can came up with every year to revenue share. They're spending every nickel they've got to keep themselves competitive."
Meanwhile, the future of sports media remains uncertain. Streaming platforms may soon push for shorter, more flexible deals -- a break from the long-term contracts that built today's college football powerhouses. Traditional networks are also transitioning to direct-to-consumer models. ESPN's standalone platform is set to launch this fall.
More à la carte options are under review. Crakes calls the next five years in media "the choice era."
All four major conferences -- Big Ten (2030), Big 12 (2031), SEC (2034), and ACC (2037) -- will see their media rights expire within the next 12 years.
"It doesn't make a super league impossible and it doesn't mean it won't happen," Crakes said. "It just may take another decade and a half."
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