A group of sports executives and college presidents, called “College Sports Tomorrow,” has devised a plan to create a new governance structure for college football that would replace the NCAA and College Football Playoff, according to a report from The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand and Stewart Mandel.

The new structure would create 7 divisions of 10 teams — all members of the former Power Five, plus Notre Dame and SMU.

An eighth division of 10 teams would come from the rest of the 134 FBS schools. That division would feature a system of promotion and relegation similar to European soccer that would give smaller schools the ability to move up into the top flight.

The 7 upper divisions would all feature permanent members, meaning the 70 P5 schools would never be in danger of being relegated.

Under the new model, the 8 division winners would all secure automatic bids to a 16-team playoff. The remaining 8 wild-card spots would be determined by record and tiebreakers — eliminating the need for a selection committee.

According to The Athletic, CST’s 20-person group includes Syracuse chancellor Kent Syverud, West Virginia president Gordon Gee, NFL executive Brian Rolapp, Philadelphia 76ers owner David Blitzer, former MLS president Mark Abbott, and TurnkeyZRG’s Len Perna.

“The current model for governing and managing college athletics is dead,” Syverud told The Athletic. 

According to Marchand and Mandel’s reporting, the group is “struggling to gain traction” with schools for its radical proposal.

CST presented before the ACC’s Board of Directors in February, but planned meetings with executives in the SEC, Big Ten, and Big 12 were all called off.

The report states that neither SEC commissioner Greg Sankey nor Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti has met with CST about the idea. According to the report, lucrative broadcast deals that stretch into the 2030s with ESPN, FOX, NBC, and CBS are currently serving as the primary obstacle facing the so-called Super League.

But leaders in the sport have long been seeking solutions to the NCAA problem. Sankey and Petitti set up a joint advisory group in February tasked with exploring solutions to ongoing issues in college sports.

While the NCAA is currently drowning in antitrust cases challenging its rules and autonomy, the pivot from multiple conferences to one league would, according to The Athletic, give way to collective bargaining between players and the league on NIL, transfer portal, and salary structure rules.

Perna “insisted” to The Athletic that CST’s model is not a money-making venture for the group. An anonymous TV executive told The Athletic it was “naive” to believe college sports has more untapped money.

CST, however, believes there’s more money to be made in a model comparable to the NFL’s TV setup.

To that end, Rolapp was the chief architect behind the NFL’s 11-year, $110 billion TV agreements in 2021.

“The only way to solve the problem is to have a solution that is legally defensible, politically acceptable, commercially prudent, and is able to strike a partnership with student-athletes in a way that’s really good for them,” Perna told The Athletic.

More on the model can be found here.