If the college football Power 4 schools decide to break away from the NCAA and form its own league what could it potentially look like? There are currently 67 P4 schools going into the 2024 season, 70 if you add Notre Dame and Pac-12 survivors Oregon State & Washington State. The ideal number I came up with was a league consisting of 80 schools because 70 isn’t very divisible. That would make sure every P4 school is in and then add ten more schools from the group of 5 to play in the new league. A new college football only league with 80 schools would make sense to have divisions of four regions with 20 teams each that are regional. The league wouldn’t be associated with the SEC, ACC, Big 12 and Big Ten. Here’s what the regions would look like and the schools that represent them. 

Regions

The ten schools getting selected into the CFPL from the G5 were Boise State, UNLV, Fresno State, Hawaii, Colorado State, Wyoming, and San Diego State from the MWC, & Memphis, Tulane and UTSA from the AAC. Hawaii provides the ability to open up that 4th and potentially 5th TV broadcasting window for late night games. These schools provide some big cities to travel and play in while also being some of the best G5 programs left. The regional alignment should bring back rivalries that have been discontinued and also somewhat provide competitive balance across the league.

Schedule

The league’s regular season will start on Labor Day Weekend and finish on Thanksgiving Weekend, which will be a permanent rivalry week against a regional opponent. Every school will play only the schools in the 80 team league, no lower level games. Each school will play 9 region games & 3 non region games. The way the schedule is setup, there will be 4 permanent rivals and rotate 5 schools so that you play every school at least once every 3 years in your region. There will only be home and home non region games, no one offs. Here’s a mock Notre Dame schedule to see how it could look.

Playoff Format

The top 4 teams in each region will make the 16-team playoffs, similar to the EPL table or high school football brackets. There will be no conference championship games or bowl games in this league. This playoff structure will avoid playing a team 3 times in one year or back to back, which are possible in the current playoff system. The first round of the playoff games will be hosted by the higher seeds in mid December. The quarter-finals will be played the following week at the Orange, Fiesta, Peach, and Cotton Bowls. The Rose and Sugar Bowls will host the Semifinals on New Year’s Day unless that falls on a Sunday. The National Championship game will be played next week on a Friday night. You can see a preview of how the new playoff format would look below.

TV Deal

ESPN has agreed to a $1.3B a year deal for the 12 team college football playoff. An expanded playoff to 16 teams would add an additional 4 more games and increase the TV value even more. With a 16 team expanded playoff and 480 regular season games there will be way more games that have playoff implications. Selling the broadcasting rights to every tv/streaming platform (CBS, Fox, ESPN/ABC, NBC etc.) will generate the most value and money for 480 regular season games. The regular season games can mimic the NFL and have every game bid out to every TV network. Fans can potentially see Georgia vs Penn State on FOX in this scenario. NBC can still have exclusive rights to Notre Dame home games. ESPN can still have the exclusive rights to the playoffs since they already bought it when it was 12 teams. A broadcasting deal like this I would estimate to be worth approximately $5B per year.

There’s also potential for the new league to have their own network channel like the major professional sports leagues have with NBA TV, NFL Network, & MLB Network. The network can sell merch, broadcast shows, games, replays, provide a streaming service and has the potential to mimic NFL redzone when teams are in scoring position. 

Revenue Distribution

A hypothetical TV deal that’s worth approximately $5B a year, would distribute out $62.5M to every school in the league. All television, sponsorship, and playoff game revenue is centralized and shared equally among the 80 teams. This ensures financial stability across the league and reduces the disparity between richer and poorer programs. Teams that make it to the postseason could receive additional bonuses, ensuring competitive balance while rewarding success. Schools can also add sponsors to the field and have a sponsored jersey patch as well to generate more money. Since this league has broken away from the NCAA the players can get paid for playing with revenue distribution, instead of just through NIL opportunities. Paying all scholarship players $80k guaranteed for the year would only cost $6.8M per school. 

Calendar

Season: Labor Day Weekend – Thanksgiving Weekend
CFB Awards Week: First Week of December
Playoffs: Mid December – Early January
No Early Signing Day
Transfer Portal Winter Window: January 1 – 15
National Signing Day: First Wednesday in February
Transfer Portal Summer Window:  May 16 – 31

A new calendar format like this, will help relieve the stress these coaches and players have to go through. In comparison to what it currently is. This is much simpler and can really help with knowing what’s going on as far as roster management. Coaches usually get fired/hired all through December(silly season), so if any players want to enter the portal they would have the time to do so. Also players won’t have to consider leaving the team during a playoff run because the portal doesn’t open up until towards the end. Having signing day at its natural spot( first Wednesday in February) and eliminating early signing day, will give coaches more time to manage their roster after the portal closes. 

League Name

College Football Playoff League (CFPL)
College Football Premier League (CFPL)
College Football Power League (CFPL)
College Football Professional League (CFPL)

Commissioner Candidates

Kevin Warren
Oliver Luck
Condoleezza Rice
Nick Saban
Gene Smith
Greg Sankey

A single commissioner would oversee the league, ensuring consistency in rules, discipline, and strategic direction. The league would set its own rules, independent of the NCAA, with a focus on player safety, academic standards, and competitive fairness. With the advent of NIL deals, the league could implement standardized NIL regulations to ensure fairness and transparency.

Fallout

What happens to the CFPL schools Olympic sports(non football)?

Since most of the conference realignment was due to football money, the schools can decide if they still want to go to their new conferences or revert back to their old one. It would make sense for the former Pac-12 schools to come back together for Olympic sports. 

What happens to the other 56 FBS schools? 

The remaining schools will operate on their own playoff system for essentially all of the G5 programs to be eligible for. With the MWC and American losing schools to the CFPL they can merge for football season to form a 16 team conference. Essentially having all military schools in the same conference would be great to see. There is room for other schools to join a conference or even an entire conference moving up to compete at the G5 level, a step up from FCS. Would love to see the CAA, Big Sky, MVFC and Southland move up to the G5 and compete for football. The G5 schools left out of the CFPL will now compete with schools on their level, with their own playoff, rankings and national championship.

Final Thoughts

This model is not perfect but it is very beneficial in essence of creating a somewhat balanced playing field for competing at the highest level. This model avoids a Florida State situation because everyone will earn their way into the postseason no more selection committee will be needed. Coaches might be more inclined to stay at their schools since every school gets the same payout and no conference realignment to be worried about being left out of playoffs. Rivalry week will mean something again with real rivals playing on the last week of the season with potential playoff implications at stake.