It’s coming. You can see football Darwinism at work, and so can we. College athletics is relentlessly consolidating its power and profits in the hands of the few. It is inexorably transforming from a sprawling association of regionally based conferences into a tighter consortium of the super-rich and super-powerful, in concert with their network overlords. Charming, we know.
Where will it end? Right here, says Sports Illustrated. We brought this exercise in greed to its logical conclusion: a 40-school alliance, split into two 20-team megaconferences that are fully weaponized versions of the Big Ten and SEC and are aligned with the highest broadcast bidders. (Fittingly, no single person is in charge—there will be a pair of competing commissioners.)
If the creation of a football-only league is inevitable—to apply a label you’ve heard a thousand times before—we’re leaning all the way into the concept. What follows is a not-so-modest proposal to create the Professional Amateur Non-Employee Football league, or PANE-FL for short.
