Which college football teams could form a Super League?
The big sports news to hit the web today was the reveal of a proposed European Super League, pitting many of the most popular european soccer clubs against each other in one league.
My first reaction when I saw this story was: How did this not happen sooner? There are only a handful of soccer clubs that have international followings, and with the ease of travel these days and the amount of money that can be made from selling a product like this to a network or streaming service, I figured this would have been happened sooner.
Of course, soccer fans are pissed. They love the tradition of their sport, which means they hate change.
The only American sport that compares to European soccer is college football. There’s incredible tradition in college football and there’s a regional pride that comes with rooting for your team. No professional sport in the United States can match college football or european soccer on either front.
College football also has just a handful of programs with national followings.
Similar to soccer fans’ reaction to this Super League announcement, college football fans largely hated each conference realignment move of the last 30 years, because each move threw tradition out the window for the sake of generating more TV money.
But why haven’t some of the top college football programs tried to band together to form a Super League?
There’s still some loyalty between schools that have played in the same conference for a long time, and there are academic alliances that are still being honored by university presidents.
But, at some point, the money will be there for a College Football Super League to be formed. Right now, networks have a variety of conferences to choose from. They can pass on one if the price gets too high, because there are other options out there.
But if one Super League had all the top programs and controlled all of that valuable inventory, it could charge NFL-level premiums from a network or streaming service. Or it could split the inventory and charge a few different services, the way the NFL charges CBS, FOX, NBC, ESPN and Amazon for different days and time slots.
So, if a College Football Super League were to ever be formed, which teams would be in it? I would pick these 16 schools for their rich histories.
SOUTH DIVISION
Alabama
Auburn
LSU
Georgia
EAST DIVISION
Clemson
Florida State
Florida
Miami
NORTH DIVISION
Michigan
Notre Dame
Ohio State
Penn State
WEST DIVISION
Nebraska
Oklahoma
Southern Cal
Texas
Sorry, Tennessee and Texas A&M fans.
Which teams would you pick?
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