Cole Cubelic assesses Trent Dilfer's claim major college programs will break away, form professional league

It’s been speculated that college teams could break away from the NCAA and form a professional league and according to UAB coach Trent Dilfer, that may become reality sooner than we think.

Speaking on McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning this past week, Dilfer claimed to have inside knowledge on rumblings that Power 5 programs will separate away from the Group of 5 and form their own league. He told co-hosts Greg McElroy and Cole Cubelic that there will be a “breakoff of about 50-60 teams” that will operate in a manner similar to professional football leagues.

He even went as far as to say there are venture capitalists currently looking to buy college franchises and essentially operate like the team owner. Cubelic joined On3‘s Andy Staples to break down the comments from Dilfer and what it means for the future of college athletics.

“I don’t even think that you and I, with all the change we’ve seen, thought it would come this quickly,” he said. “A lot of people would hear $1 billion, 20% of that and they would say that’s a large sum. Then the other people would say, ‘yeah, it’s a large number, but it’s also 20% to people who have no bearing over who wins our title and really and truly how many eyeballs come to our portion of the sport. Why are we sharing with them?’

“…To hear a guy like Trent Dilfer, who’s not afraid to speak his kind, I think you also have to think about where his roots go back to. He played in the NFL so he knows a lot of people that know a lot of things there. He worked for ESPN so there’s a lot of things there. And he’s got that golf background where he’s got a place in Tahoe where a lot of the Silicon Valley folks live because of tax reasons. So he’s got some good resources. He had one individual reach out to him and say, ‘how much would team X cost?’ A lot of these guys want to do this because they could not become NFL owners and this would be the next best thing. How do you even evaluate the price, the true valuation of some of these programs? I don’t know.”

Although football is the major player and moneymaker in college sports, such a split would impact every sport. Cubelic speculated on what would happen to college basketball’s NCAA Tournament, widely regarded as one of the best sporting events in the country.

Cinderella stories are a critical part of what makes March Madness such an entertaining spectacle. Whether it’s George Mason or Loyola Chicago, we love watching David take down Goliath and make runs to the Final Four.

Surely we wouldn’t lose one of the greatest aspects of college hoops, right? Cubelic isn’t so sure.

“There are people like me that don’t want to see the Southern Conference or the SWAC or the Sun Belt not get that automatic qualifier,” he said. “We want them to be able to get in because we feel like it’s big enough, it’s grand enough room. …We had Jay Bilas on our show last week and I asked him about those smaller automatic qualifiers. I was really surprised, but he basically said ‘why? Do you watch for them? Do you watch for Mercer? Do you watch for Florida Gulf Coast? Do you watch for Samford?’

“No, but when they win, I do think it draws more people in. I do think it makes it more appealing and I think we watch because Kansas or Auburn or North Carolina might lose to those teams. People are still talking about what happened to Purdue last year because it’s Purdue, but also because Fairleigh Dickinson did that to Purdue. So it’s a little bit of a scary place that we’re going.”

It seems this is the reality college sports is heading for, but there’s still a lot to figure out. Firstly, what teams will be included in the potential super league? Would every Big Ten and SEC team make it, or would lesser programs like Vanderbilt and Rutgers be left out?

Then there’s the aspect of the student-athlete. If players are considered employees, would they still be required to attend classes? It’s a tall task to get organized, and the fact that it could be coming relatively soon is hard to fathom.

“It’s wild to hear that part of it and think, ‘OK, where would we go? Who would those teams be? How many would there be?'” Cubelic said. “If we’ve gotta get to 50 or 60, we can do more than just cherry pick. That’s another large group of teams that we can bring with us. Then fast forward to the portion of all the other things surrounding employment, attending school and actually being a student or not. Are you 1099ing these guys? Is there a trust that this money’s going into?

“…Which schools would go is very interesting. The second portion of that is when it just becomes so convoluted and flat out confusing as to how it would look, what it would be, how you make it up, who governs it.”