As super league proposals emerge, Big Ten, SEC remain on course

NASHVILLE – In a conference room on the fourth floor of the Grand Hyatt on Thursday, the two most powerful men in college athletics led an unprecedented moment. Greg Sankey and Tony Petitti brought together 34 athletic directors from the Big Ten and SEC for a roughly seven-hour meeting to discuss the state of college sports.

As private equity circles college football and landscape-altering proposals are leaked, the real Super League met. The SEC and Big Ten are established at the top of the sport. The two conferences now have the sport’s top brands and most lucrative TV deals. They’re also poised to land the most teams in the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff which begins in December.

As one SEC athletic director told On3 after the meeting there is “never a dull moment.” And with the House v. NCAA settlement expected to usher in revenue sharing in less than nine months, the two richest conferences are expected to lead the pack.

“I have yet to see a single thing in any plan that I’ve learned details about that contains things that we couldn’t do ourselves and our A4 colleagues as well,” Petitti said. “… The notion that college football is broken is not right. … It’s not broken.”

Growing to a 70-team Super League, as proposed in Project Rudy and the College Student Football League, is not needed to create parity, Sankey and Petitti believe. The conference commissioners pointed to the five top 25 teams that lost to unranked programs last weekend. There was a real conversation about the possibilities of more scheduling partnerships around football and basketball.

“We had real general conversation about what ifs in football and basketball and talked briefly about others sports,” Sankey said about a joint scheduling deal.

The Big Ten and SEC have no plans of ceasing power. Thursday’s meeting in Nashville was the latest sign of how the two conferences will play vital roles in reshaping the next era of college sports.

“It’s no coincidence that both these efforts ramped up their public relations schemes around our meeting,” the SEC commissioner pointedly said about recent proposals. “There are coincidences in life. I also don’t think it’s coincidental that they’ve chosen to comment on both Tony and I.”

Big Ten, SEC focused on inaugural 12-team CFP

The ramifications of the 12-team postseason remain to be seen. But every team in the sport now has a path to the College Football Playoff, including the Group of Five. Entering the meeting, ESPN reported both leagues would prefer to have up to four automatic bids to the playoff when the next contract begins in 2026.

The 12-team format is locked in for this season and 2025. Beyond that remains unknown. Neither Sankey, nor Petitti said adding bids came up in Thursday’s meeting.

“This just has to go incredibly well,” Sankey said regarding the upcoming postseason. “This has to be a successful launch. This isn’t the time to talk about governance in ’26 or format in ’26, but the immediate implementation is in front of us.”

When asked if the conferences controlled the future of the CFP format, Sankey said the conferences have a “defined role where we have to be clear participants at the end of that conversation.” With two College Football Playoff selection committee members in the room – Michigan’s Warde Manuel and Arkansas‘ Hunter Yurachek – time was spent going over the format of the bracket and on-campus games.

“Our focus on future format comes after we go through this first cycle of the expanded college football plan,” Sankey said. “So not a lot of conversation about what ifs. For Tony and I both, we’ve communicated with [CFP executive director] Rich Clark and his staff and our colleagues have as well.”

Focus remains on House v. NCAA settlement, Congress

Judge Claudia Wilken preliminarily approved the landscape-shifting House v. NCAA settlement in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Monday, a significant step in a lengthy approval process.

Sankey and Petitti did not provide an update on enforcement through the new non-NCAA NIL clearinghouse, which requires approval of all third-party NIL deals of $600 or more. The SEC commissioner admitted that NCAA governance needs to change, though.

“The settlement is a catalyst,” Petitti said. “That settlement requires so many things to change, it’s just a catalyst to get after some of the other things. Hopefully, we get final approval of the settlement and implement the system, that’s going to require a lot of thinking in other places.”

One of those other places is Congress. For almost two years, Sankey, Petitti and college sports leaders have headed to Washington, D.C., to secure an antitrust exemption. Sankey pointed out Thursday the patchwork of state laws he faces in the SEC.

Multiple sources have told On3 in the last week that Sen. Ted Cruz is working on new legislation and has held meetings with Power Four schools to hammer out a bill. The goal is for it to be introduced later this year or in early 2025. Even with the House v. NCAA settlement, college sports leaders are seeking power for uniform state NIL laws and enshrining the terms of the settlement, a source told On3.

A ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Cruz has the position and political clout to push through legislation. He previously held a roundtable with former Alabama head coach Nick Saban and the Cavinder Twins, among others.

“An important message that we received when went down [D.C.] there was like, ‘OK if the system changes, then it could help us,'” Petitti said. “This is a very different system that we’re about to implement. So I think that’s striking in our messaging.”