Paper No. 8 - A Constitutional Structure for College Football
The most plausible framework for a lawful, durable, and competitive system of college football governance.
“Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct.”
— Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 8
The prior papers have described the forces reshaping college football: the erosion of NCAA authority, the growing instability of the current compensation system, the fragmented football calendar, the increasing role of litigation, and the practical limits of the existing structure.
Those pressures do not dictate a single solution.
They do, however, narrow the range of plausible ones.
A durable system must satisfy several conditions simultaneously. It must operate within existing legal constraints. It must provide institutions with a workable framework for coordination. It must recognize the economic realities of the modern sport while preserving the competitive characteristics that make college football distinct.
Just as importantly, it must be capable of surviving contact with reality.
This paper proceeds from a narrower claim than many reform proposals. It does not attempt to design a perfect system, nor does it assume that longstanding tensions between institutions, athletes, conferences, and media partners can be eliminated entirely.
It argues instead that the most plausible long-term framework is a federated structure: a system in which authority is shared, incentives are aligned more coherently, and major college football is governed through institutions designed specifically for the conditions under which the sport now operates.
I. Why a Federated Structure Is the Most Plausible Outcome
The present system lacks a coherent center of authority.
The NCAA retains formal governance power, but its ability to impose durable rules has weakened. Conferences possess significant influence, yet their incentives increasingly diverge. Individual institutions operate with growing independence, while courts and external actors now shape outcomes that were once controlled internally.
At the same time, full centralization is neither politically realistic nor especially desirable.
College football remains rooted in institutions with distinct histories, regional identities, and competitive priorities. Conferences continue to provide meaningful value as organizing structures, both culturally and commercially.
A federated system reflects those realities more accurately than either extreme.
Under such a model:
core governance functions would be centralized;
conferences would continue to organize competition within that framework; and
institutions would retain substantial autonomy outside those areas requiring coordinated rules.
The objective is not centralization for its own sake. It is the creation of a structure capable of producing enforceable rules while preserving the decentralized features that continue to make the sport distinctive.
II. The Federation Itself
At the center of the system would be a new governing entity devoted exclusively to major college football.
This body would not replace the NCAA across all sports, nor would it function as a traditional commissioner’s office with unilateral authority over every aspect of competition. Its legitimacy would depend on representation, defined jurisdiction, and negotiated authority.
Its responsibilities would likely include:
governance of competition;
administration of compensation frameworks;
transfer and eligibility rules;
enforcement and dispute resolution;
scheduling standards;
postseason administration; and
negotiation with athlete representatives.
The structure matters as much as the powers themselves.
A system governed solely by institutions would encounter many of the same legal vulnerabilities that now constrain the NCAA. A system governed solely through athlete leverage would struggle to produce stable coordination across participants with vastly different resources and objectives.
A more durable framework would likely require representation from:
participating institutions;
conferences;
athlete representatives; and
independent members responsible for oversight, integrity, and dispute resolution.
No constituency would fully control the system.
That is not a flaw. It is the point.
III. Membership, Tiers, and Competitive Alignment
Not every institution participates in college football at the same level of commitment, investment, or national significance.
The current system recognizes this informally while refusing to acknowledge it structurally. The result is constant tension between institutions pursuing fundamentally different competitive and economic objectives.
A federated model would address this more directly.
The highest tier would likely consist initially of the institutions already operating within the current power-conference structure, together with other programs capable of meeting the obligations associated with participation.
Importantly, this would not function as a permanently closed system.
Participation would depend less on historical status than on continued commitment to the requirements of the structure itself:
investment thresholds;
scholarship and facility standards;
compensation participation;
governance obligations; and
sustained competitive commitment.
A more transparent competitive structure would also make visible something the current system often obscures: not every institution will participate indefinitely at the highest level of major college football.
That reality already exists in practice. Financial commitment, competitive investment, donor support, facilities, recruiting infrastructure, and institutional priorities already differ dramatically across the sport. The present system merely masks those disparities through unstable conference alignments and formal labels that no longer reflect operational reality consistently. (As an alum of a Group 5 school, I know this firsthand.)
Acknowledging those differences openly is not punitive.
It is more honest than pretending all institutions continue to operate under identical conditions.
The present system already contains functional tiers. They are simply unstable, inconsistently governed, and obscured by formal labels that no longer reflect operational reality.
The question is not whether differentiation exists.
It is whether that differentiation should occur transparently within a coherent structure rather than through endless realignment and escalating institutional conflict.
Movement between tiers would likely occur gradually and infrequently. American sports traditions make full promotion and relegation improbable, and existing institutional relationships make immediate exclusion politically unrealistic.
Over time, however, participation would increasingly reflect the realities of competition and commitment rather than legacy affiliation alone.
IV. Conferences and the Preservation of Influence
Conferences would not disappear under a federated system.
They would evolve.
Their role would remain substantial:
organizing scheduling within federation parameters;
preserving rivalries and regional identity;
administering conference competition; and
participating directly in governance through federation representation.
What changes is the source of ultimate authority.
At present, conferences increasingly function as quasi-sovereign actors competing for media leverage, institutional advantage, and survival. That structure contributes directly to instability. Realignment decisions are often driven less by the long-term health of the sport than by short-term positioning within media negotiations and conference politics.
This dynamic is difficult to sustain indefinitely.
A federated structure offers conferences something the current environment increasingly struggles to provide: preservation through coordination.
This does not mean conferences surrender authority without resistance. Many will be reluctant to cede power over scheduling, revenue, or governance. Some may reasonably fear diminished autonomy within a broader framework.
Those concerns are legitimate.
The alternative, however, is not preservation of the current system. It is continued fragmentation.
Absent a more coherent structure, authority is likely to continue shifting:
toward courts;
toward media partners;
toward individual institutions acting independently; and
toward external compensation markets beyond meaningful institutional control.
In that environment, conferences retain names and contracts, but lose influence over the broader direction of the sport.
The federated model does not eliminate conferences. It provides a framework within which they can continue to matter.
V. Rulemaking and Enforcement
One of the clearest weaknesses of the present system is the widening gap between rulemaking and enforcement.
Rules continue to exist, but enforcement is often delayed, contested, inconsistent, or reshaped by litigation before it is completed. Participants increasingly operate within a system where the practical consequences of violating rules are uncertain.
That condition undermines legitimacy over time.
A federated structure would not eliminate disputes or legal pressure, but it could produce a more coherent process.
Rules affecting competition, compensation, eligibility, and movement would likely emerge through negotiated procedures involving both institutions and athlete representatives. Governance would become less unilateral and more procedural.
That distinction matters legally as well as practically.
Enforcement would require:
independent investigative authority;
standardized penalty structures;
defined adjudication procedures; and
formal appellate mechanisms.
The objective is not aggressive punishment for its own sake.
It is predictability.
Participants must understand not only what the rules are, but how they are likely to be applied.
At present, that clarity often does not exist.
VI. Athlete Representation and Negotiated Governance
As discussed in the prior paper, the long-term trajectory of the sport increasingly points toward some form of negotiated governance.
This does not necessarily require college football to replicate every feature of professional labor systems. The institutional setting remains different, and any eventual structure would likely develop in ways unique to higher education.
Even so, purely unilateral governance appears increasingly difficult to sustain.
A federated system would therefore likely include formal mechanisms for athlete representation in negotiations involving:
compensation frameworks;
transfer rules;
eligibility standards;
scheduling and calendar issues; and
health and safety matters.
The significance of this arrangement is not limited to participation alone.
Negotiated structures may provide stronger legal footing for coordinated rules that would otherwise face substantial antitrust scrutiny if imposed unilaterally.
That reality is already becoming visible across the sport.
VII. The Competitive Structure
The quality of the competitive product remains one of college football’s greatest strengths.
The regular season carries unusual significance. Rivalries retain emotional weight. Regional identity still matters in ways largely absent from professional sports.
Those features should be preserved carefully.
At present, however, the structure surrounding the sport often undermines them. Scheduling lacks coherence. Competitive alignment is uneven. The postseason operates partially outside the broader framework of the season itself.
The playoff debate illustrates the larger problem.
Expansion proposals increasingly reflect institutional politics and media incentives rather than the competitive logic of the sport. A twenty-four-team playoff may create additional inventory, but it risks weakening the regular season—the single most valuable competitive asset college football possesses.
The sport does not benefit from becoming a diluted imitation of professional postseason structures.
It benefits from preserving the importance of each Saturday.
A federated model would allow for:
more coherent scheduling;
clearer competitive tiers;
integrated postseason qualification;
reduced mismatch games; and
greater year-to-year continuity.
The objective is not to eliminate unpredictability or regional variation. Those qualities remain central to the appeal of the sport.
The objective is to ensure that the structure surrounding the competition reinforces those strengths rather than gradually eroding them.
Institutions charged with governing college football should be incentivized not merely to maximize inventory, but to preserve the qualities that made the product valuable in the first place.
VIII. Economic Coordination and Competitive Sustainability
The economic structure of the current system is increasingly fragmented.
Media rights remain tied largely to conferences. Compensation flows through a combination of institutional resources and external NIL arrangements. Spending continues to escalate without a stable framework governing how costs, obligations, and competitive balance interact over time.
This environment creates pressures that are difficult to coordinate effectively.
Institutions compete simultaneously:
for players;
for media leverage;
for conference positioning; and
for donor and sponsorship support.
No participant can easily reduce spending unilaterally without risking competitive disadvantage.
Over time, this produces the familiar dynamics of escalation.
A federated structure would not eliminate economic inequality. College football has never operated on perfectly equal footing, and no realistic system will entirely erase resource differences between institutions.
The goal is narrower and more practical.
It is to create a framework within which competition remains sustainable.
That likely requires:
coordinated approaches to compensation;
clearer relationships between institutional spending and system revenues;
more transparent economic obligations;
and some form of shared governance over national commercial assets.
The precise mechanisms would remain subject to negotiation and adjustment over time.
That uncertainty is unavoidable.
What matters is the existence of a structure capable of managing those negotiations coherently rather than leaving them entirely to fragmented market pressures and ad hoc institutional behavior.
IX. Separation from the NCAA and the Reordering of Incentives
Under a federated model, major college football would operate separately from the NCAA while other sports remain within more traditional collegiate structures.
This separation reflects practical realities rather than hostility toward the NCAA itself.
Football now operates at a national commercial scale with legal and economic pressures that differ substantially from those affecting most other collegiate sports.
A more clearly separated football structure may also help clarify increasingly difficult legal questions surrounding compensation and Title IX. Football already operates economically unlike any other collegiate sport, with roster sizes, revenues, and commercial significance that fundamentally shape the broader athletic system around it.
For decades, the broader athletic system has effectively been organized around football economics while simultaneously attempting to treat football as structurally indistinguishable from every other sport. That tension is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.
This is particularly true because football lacks a direct equivalent elsewhere in the collegiate sports structure. No women’s sport operates at comparable roster scale, revenue generation, or commercial significance. Attempting to fit football’s economic model neatly within assumptions designed for the broader collegiate athletic system increasingly creates tension not only for football itself, but for the continued administration of non-revenue and Olympic sports as well.
A separate football governance structure would not eliminate those challenges entirely. It may, however, allow them to be addressed more transparently than the present system permits.
Attempting to govern both environments under the same assumptions has increasingly distorted the incentives of each.
The consequences are visible well beyond football.
Conference realignment driven primarily by football economics has imposed growing burdens on non-revenue and Olympic sports. Athletes in sports with fundamentally regional competitive traditions now travel across multiple time zones for routine conference competition.
A softball player at UCLA should not routinely travel to State College because football television contracts required conference consolidation.
A more regional structure for non-football sports is not a retreat.
It is a restoration of competitive logic.
Under a separated system:
football could operate within a national framework appropriate to its scale;
non-revenue sports could return to more regional competition;
and institutions could manage both structures simultaneously without forcing one to distort the other.
The NCAA would continue to serve an important function.
It simply would no longer attempt to govern a sport whose scale and legal realities have exceeded the framework for which it was designed.
A separate football governance structure may also clarify legal questions surrounding compensation and Title IX that become increasingly difficult to manage within a single undifferentiated model of collegiate athletics.
X. Implementation and the Pace of Change
No plausible transition occurs overnight.
The institutions most likely to participate in a federated system remain bound together by:
conference relationships;
media agreements;
grant-of-rights provisions;
postseason arrangements; and
political realities that cannot simply be ignored.
The transition therefore would likely unfold incrementally.
Initial coordination would probably emerge among institutions already operating within the current power structure. Governance principles could develop before formal separation occurs. Negotiated frameworks might initially operate alongside existing agreements rather than replacing them immediately.
Major transition points would likely coincide with:
expiring media contracts;
playoff renegotiations;
settlement structures;
or broader legal developments affecting athlete compensation and employment status.
In practice, reform is less likely to resemble revolution than migration.
The system changes gradually until the old structure no longer serves as the primary source of authority.
That process is already beginning.
XI. A Structure Designed to Endure
No governing structure eliminates conflict.
College football will continue to contain competing interests, unequal resources, legal disputes, and institutional tension regardless of how it is organized.
The question is whether those conflicts occur within a framework capable of managing them coherently.
The current system increasingly struggles to do so.
A federated structure does not promise perfection. It does not eliminate politics, economic disparities, or competitive pressure.
It offers something narrower, but more important.
A system capable of producing rules that participants recognize as legitimate, that courts are more likely to sustain, and that preserve the distinctive qualities of the sport over time.
That is not a complete solution to every problem facing college football.
It is, however, the most plausible foundation upon which one could be built.