Making Sense of The Coming College Football Super League — The Blue Bloods
Since Texas and Oklahoma bolted from the Big XII for the SEC (and the SEC welcomed them with open arms), rumors have swirled about the next moves in conference realignment. Will the Big 10 snatch up some of the remaining Big XII schools? Will Clemson and Florida State bolt the ACC for the SEC? Maybe Ohio State and Michigan will leave the Big 10 for the SEC?
If you look at the basic economics of college football it is easy to see that most of these rumors don’t make any financial sense, particularly the idea that the abandoned Big XII schools hold any particular attractiveness for the Big 10. But it is also clear that further realignment will happen. While the Big XII has the biggest disparity in economic strength of its top two programs and the rest of the teams, there are clear disparities within every conference that may ultimately pull apart the existing conference alignments.
As a thought exercise I decided to put together a 32-team CFB Super League based on economic strength and stability of the various programs. I charted how the FBS football teams rate on three financial metrics: average TV viewers (in the 2018 and 2019 seasons), average attendance over the past five years, and total football program revenue (as reported to the Department of Education).
In the below chart you can see that this separates out 18 blue-blood programs. These are the football programs that will still be on top after any conference realignment(s) and will be the core of making a CFB Super League as FBS football continues to chase money in realignment.
These 18 teams all rank in the top 20 for average TV viewers and attendance. Sixteen of the eighteen are in the top 20 for total football program revenue. All but four of the teams have won a national championship (or several) in the past 50 years. There are 8 SEC teams, 6 from the Big 10, and two each from the ACC and Big XII (although in just a few years that will shift to 10 SEC teams and zero Big XII teams).
Based on these three metrics we can see why the abandoned Big XII schools are not that attractive to the remaining conference. They rate largely middle of the pack in attendance and viewership of the non-blue blood power 5 programs. You can also see the disparity between the programs in the power 5 conferences, and the group of five conferences as just a few select teams from the AAC and Mountain West get into the same range of TV viewers and attendance as the bottom power 5 programs.
The following table lists the 18 blue bloods by average TV viewers, and includes the attendance and revenue information.
College football fans will immediately notice several programs that would be considered blue bloods by other definitions are missing. USC has a long and storied tradition. Miami and Florida State have each won multiple national championships and were arguably the most dominant programs of 1980’s and 1990’s, respectively.
I will explore how those teams stack up and whether they can make as much of an ironclad case for any of the remaining 14 super league spots as our initial cut of blue bloods.
