A Big 12 official has sent a letter to other college presidents and chancellors regarding “models for the future of college football specifically and college athletics overall,” according to a Wednesday report from Pete Thamel of ESPN.
In the letter, Linda Livingstone, Big 12 board chair and Baylor University president, urged leaders from the SEC, Big Ten, ACC and Big 12 to attend an early December summit in the Dallas area.
But per Thamel’s report, no presidents or chancellors from SEC or Big Ten schools are expected to attend the proposed gathering.
“When this letter was discussed at the SEC presidential level, a source said it was viewed as a ‘distraction,’” Thamel reported.
He continued, “In the Big Ten, it has been consistent that the league has not taken joint meetings around super league proposals. Commissioner Tony Petitti said recently that there’s nothing that the super league proposals could offer that college athletics couldn’t do on its own.”
Thamel shared that Livingstone’s letter was influenced by the possibility of a “Super League” model emerging within college football, with Livingstone wanting “an opportunity to hear from the architects of these models or to discuss their implications together as university leaders.”
“The Big 12 Board believes this is an important opportunity for us as presidents and chancellors to reset our role in college athletics as we seek to create a sustainable model for the future,” Livingstone said in a statement to Thamel.
As previously reported by the Deseret News, the Super League movement stems from a group of 20 “powerful” people called College Sports Tomorrow, which wishes to separate college football from the NCAA by establishing a single 70-team league.
The massive realignment would eliminate the committee aspect of playoff selection and provide new regulations for NIL and the transfer portal.
