Hey there,

Remember earlier this week when we told you about Rick Pitino’s pitch to form a college basketball “super league”? Well we took him up on the challenge, and for today’s edition, we have a comprehensive plan for how a college basketball super league might look.

Now before you get mad, don’t worry: The system doesn’t get rid of March Madness — in fact, it actually makes March Madness even more important by offering a massive incentive for teams that reach the Elite Eight. Simultaneously, it also makes the regular season more important by offering year-over-year incentives to teams who finish at the top.

Sounds too good to be true? We don’t think so — in fact, we think this system would actually fix a ton of the problems we currently see with college basketball, all while elevating the quality of play substantially.

You won’t want to miss this one. All-Access subscriptions are super affordable — get it now and become the smartest college basketball fan in the room!

— Cole, Justin and Collin

Here’s what a College Basketball “Super-League” could look like

No one cares about college basketball more than Rick Pitino. He’s been coaching college hoops for 36 years now, and he’s adapted pretty well over the course of three-and-a-half decades – his most impressive, perhaps, is his commitment to turning St. John’s into an NIL powerhouse.

I say all this because, for all his perceived flaws, Pitino seems genuinely interested in making college basketball better. That’s why it caught my eye when I saw him talk about college basketball creating a “Super League” to compete with college football:

“If I was to, I'd want something to combat football,” Pitino said to the media recently, “Whether it's 18 teams, 20 teams super league, something needs to combat football because it's just taken over our whole landscape.” 

He’s not wrong. College football is the biggest revenue generator in college sports, which is tied to media rights deals. Media rights deals are handled mostly by the conferences, which is why some schools have jumped into conferences that don’t exactly make a ton of sense (I’m looking at you, former Pac-12 schools). 

Of course, these decisions don’t just effect football. They effect all sports – soccer, softball, you name it. Because of how the money is set up, everything follows football’s lead.

That’s why Pitino suggested we form some sort of “super league” – if there were enough media rights money to be had by consolidating around the top twenty teams, then basketball itself could detach from football, and Rutgers wouldn’t have to play UCLA a few times a year. 

I started thinking a bit: what would a “Super League” look like for college basketball? And now here we are – my proposal for how I would change college sports by creating a “Super League.”

There’s one caveat here: If Pitino was talking about forming a super league around the biggest brands, I’m out. I talk about that at length here, in the piece we ran about Project Rudy, but the basic idea is that we should reward good play, not good brands.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get started. Here’s my idea for a College Basketball Super League.

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