Baylor president and Big 12 board chairwoman Linda Livingstone has sent a letter to university leaders in the ACC, Big Ten and SEC, inviting them to a summit in early December, where they can hear directly from groups pitching potential new models for college football.
According to a copy of the letter obtained Wednesday by The Athletic, the “Presidents and Chancellors Summit on the Future of College Athletics” would take place Dec. 2-3 in Dallas.
In recent months, two so-called college football super league models have been circulating among athletic directors and conference commissioners, Livingstone wrote.
“The Big 12 Conference Board of Directors agrees there is an urgent need for the presidents and chancellors from the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC to gather in person to discuss these and other topics impacting college athletics and each of our universities,” she wrote.
The idea to hear directly from the creators of the two models was birthed during a Big 12 board meeting in October and later expanded to invite the university leaders of all the Power 4 conferences, a person involved in those discussions told The Athletic. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because those involved were not making their internal discussions public.
Livingstone is a prominent presidential leader in college sports, currently serving as chair of the NCAA’s Board of Governors — the association’s highest governing body.
The super league models are pitched as a way to preserve certain aspects of college football and college sports in general, while ushering in a more professionalized system that organizers believe will also be more profitable for schools.
One model, pitched by a group called College Sports Tomorrow that involves some university presidents from the Big 12 and ACC, lays out a big-tent approach to college sports that would include most of the current FBS under one umbrella organization.
The other, dubbed Project Rudy, after the mythologized Notre Dame walk-on, is the brainchild of a group of former Disney executives turned venture capitalists.
Neither plan has drawn any interest from the Big Ten and SEC.
“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 do with other colleagues,” Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti said in September at a meeting of athletic directors from his league and the SEC held in Nashville. “I don’t see anything that’s proprietary that anybody holds, that we would need, that someone else controls to do what they’re talking about.”
College sports is transitioning to a more professionalized model with revenue sharing with athletes poised to be implemented for the 2025-26 school year.
The plan is part of the $2.78 billion settlement of several antitrust lawsuits facing the NCAA and power conferences that received preliminary approval from a California judge last month. If the plan receives final approval, schools can begin directing about $20 million per year in new payments to their athletes.
(Photo: Ron Jenkins / Getty Images)
