Why Big Ten, SEC are incentivized to spoil 'Super League' single-entity approach

College sports and college football in particular are rapidly changing. Now, it looks as though there is a push for another major change, to create a ‘Super League’ that would have a single-entity approach. However, to this point, it seems as though the SEC and Big Ten aren’t involved.

This ‘Super League’ was reported in The Athletic by Andrew Marchand, and he joined Andy Staples On3 to discuss what it means moving forward. While doing so, Staples brought up that the SEC and the Big Ten haven’t yet met with the group working on this idea and emphasized the financial investment made in both of these conferences by the networks.

“The thing that’s the real beauty of this group is they don’t have any real ties to the conferences,” Andrew Marchand said. “They’re not media entities. So, they do have that advantage when you look at it.”

There is a lot of change that would come with this ‘Super League.’ That includes conferences as they have existed in the sport going away, promotion, and relegation.

“The problem that you have when you talk about the conferences when you’re someone like the SEC and you’re Greg Sankey, you represent Alabama, but you also represent Vanderbilt. Same thing with Tony Petitti and the Big Ten. You represent Michigan and Ohio State, but you also represent Northwestern,” Marchand said.

“So, how do you go into a meeting where it clearly wouldn’t be as good if you’re looking at his set up and they’re going to be paid according to the top 70 schools, and let’s say Northwestern is 50 to 60, but right now they’re being paid like any top school because they’re getting Big Ten money. This doesn’t seem like a good plan for them. They’d rather be tied in with Michigan and Ohio State in terms of what kind of check they’re getting cut. So, that’s an issue.”

The other reason why the SEC and Big Ten could be tentative to agree to that change is because the commissioners don’t want to lose football or even, potentially, their jobs.

“Another issue is if you’re Tony Petitti or Greg Sankey do you want to basically get rid of the SEC or the Big Ten and you don’t have a job, or you do have a job but you don’t have football, which is the number one sport in the United States for those commissioners,” Marchand said. “So, they’re not really incentivized to do that. So, do I think that Petitti and Sankey, those are the two most important commissioners, they can kind of drive where things go and they represent the Big Ten and the SEC. So, that coalition is one to watch, but when you read our story, do I think there’s potential for these ideas to go forward? Maybe not with this group, I do. I think that is realistic.”

The ‘Super League’ is a plan that has been worked on by a group of college presidents, Roger Goodell’s primary lieutenant at the NFL, and other top executives in the sport.

Despite college football’s two biggest conferences not being incentivized to go along with this ‘Super League,’ Andy Staples does think that there are ideas coming from this that could trickle into the future of the sport, especially because some kind of change is on the horizon.

“I think that’s the important thing that’s going to come out of this because, like you said, to create what you’re talking about would require a dismantling of the conference system that has ruled college sports for over 100 years,” Staples said. “That seems a little bit far-fetched, but the idea of these ideas trickling into discussions that Greg Sankey and Tony Petitti have admitted need to be had, that doesn’t seem far-fetched at all.”

For Andrew Marchand, there is even a possibility that the SEC and Big Ten see themselves as a future AFC and NFC equivalent for college football. In that system, those two conferences could potentially survive amid change.

“You’re more versed in this than I am, but the idea of the SEC and the Big Ten just becoming the AFC and the NFC has been out there,” Marchand said. “Fans have talked about that, media has talked about that, everyone has talked about that, but do you want to be the ones who kill college football everywhere else? I don’t know if that’s even good. I don’t even know if that’s good for you. You could argue that it’s not. So, you look at this system and maybe you bring the conferences.”