The policy in brief
What this part would establish
- National rules control postseason access, minimum schedule standards, ranking disclosure, calendar windows, and baseline player protections.
- Conferences retain membership, identity, internal schedules, rivalry rotation, and compliant championship formats.
- Athletes receive substantive representation wherever rules affect movement, workload, contracts, or compensation.
- Travel, family assistance, insurance, and student support are funded before discretionary distributions.
- No integrated launch occurs until historical, legal, welfare, financial, and host-capacity gates pass.
- A three-year renewable coordination compact governs postseason windows, player transition, data portability, health and development obligations, and public reporting.
How it works
A joint governing structure
The council would include CFP management, every FBS conference, independents, NCAA Division I representatives, the NFL, NFLPA, athletics directors, faculty representatives, coaches, current and former players, medical experts, and media and bowl partners. Representation must carry real voting or negotiated authority, not ceremonial consultation.
Revenue priorities
The framework preserves conference base distributions, adds transparent participant and advancement payments, fully funds direct obligations, creates a defined National Tournament pool, shares incremental media value under negotiated rules, and publishes an annual audited distribution report.
Four implementation phases
Phase 1 backtests brackets, protection, ranking weights, workloads, attendance, logistics, and tournament fields across at least ten seasons. Phase 2 builds governance and legal architecture in parallel. Phase 3 pilots public ranking dashboards and scheduling standards for one or two seasons. Phase 4 launches the integrated package at the available rights-cycle point.
The launch-gate philosophy
The decision requested is authorization to design and test, not blind adoption. The economic workbook intentionally displays failed gates when verified data is missing or downside coverage is inadequate. Evidence can amend or reject a rule; the proposal is not credible if every test is designed to pass.
Reciprocal development obligations
College football supplies nearly the entire domestic development pathway for NFL players; the compact therefore treats development as a shared responsibility. Proposed obligations include consent-based medical-data portability, standardized verified testing, draft and disability insurance coordination, workload protections around all-star and combine events, degree-completion support, and a negotiated NFL/NFLPA contribution to player health, education, and longitudinal safety research.
Safeguards
What keeps the rule honest
- Historical results and model assumptions are published in reproducible form.
- Athlete-welfare, legal, labor, academic, media, and host audits are independent enough to identify failure.
- Material revisions and unresolved conflicts are preserved in the public change history.
- The compact sunsets after three years unless its calendar, welfare, legal, and transparency standards are independently reviewed and renewed.
Still to resolve
Questions testing must answer
- Which entity has final authority when CFP, NCAA, conference, and player interests conflict?
- What downside revenue threshold must the package clear before launch?
- Which rules require collective bargaining, legislation, contractual amendment, or antitrust protection?
Discuss this rule
The proposal ends.
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