I remember April 18, 2021. It’s right in the middle of the European soccer season, a couple months after the winter transfer window closes and a month or so before the season ends.
It’s the day the European Super League was announced.
The concept — to isolate the best few teams in a league that would ensure their profits and big-time matchups — goes against everything in the history of the sport. The reckoning that followed was individual and unique in the absolute backlash that it drew. Legendary figures across the sport condemned it. The UK’s government put out a statement speaking out against it.
When I read the briefing for “Project Rudy,” a new proposal intended to “revitalize” college football by creating a new super-conference intended to boost views and profits for the biggest teams, I got chills. I texted my friend: “I see the Super League all over again.” I started to pick it apart.
The reins of the push for innovation across college football are in the hands of many. It lies with schools, commissioners and players. It’s those people who decide where the sport goes, but it’s the fans who can push back.
The key issue from the college version of the Super League — the part that people behind plans like these can’t seem to understand — is that not every game has to be a barnburner. If you played the Civil War every week, it wouldn’t matter as much. Sixty thousand people still showed up at Autzen Stadium for a game against Michigan State where the line at kickoff was 23.5 points in the Ducks’ favor. People don’t show up just for the game. They come to the stadium to be part of a community; one that matters more than the game does.
The question lies in whether American fans will show up in the way that the European groups did.
The retaliation to the European Super League was swift and absolute. Fans protested outside stadiums. Social media was taken over by outright rejection of the prospect.
There’s an enduring image from those protests. Former Chelsea FC goalkeeper Petr Čech, now in a front office role with the club, entered the masses outside Stamford Bridge (Chelsea’s stadium). Behind him are signs reading “Shame on you Chelsea,” and “Football belongs to us, not you.”
There’s not one ounce of support — except there’s an immeasurable amount of it, and those thousands showed up to defend their team, and their sport. Less than nine hours later, the club released a statement announcing that it would withdraw from the Super League. The other teams soon followed.
Will the same happen in America? I don’t know.
It’s important to recognize that the attitude towards sport is completely different between the two continents. In England, there’s a for-the-sport culture that contradicts everything about television contracts in America. Even with the 21st-century work that has been done to eradicate it (in the UK in particular), it still exists. The FA Cup is still played every year, like it has been for over 150 years, and most professional, semi-professional and amateur teams in the nation are invited.
No one over here could imagine the Yankees coming to Eugene to play the Emeralds in a competitive game. No one over here seems to think of the non-commercial implications of a movement like this, which seems to think only of the best and never of the rest. No one over here thinks of the sport.
I talked to College GameDay host Rece Davis about “Project Rudy” when the show visited two weeks ago. He brought up some good points, while admitting that he didn’t have the full picture.
“That’s what the fans want, and truth be told,” Davis told me, “it’s what the players want. They’d much rather Oregon play Ohio State than an FCS team. I know it’s a little bit different, but I think they’d rather play a schedule full of those, instead of some of the quote-unquote lesser games.”
But especially in a season such as this one, which Chuck Culpepper described for the Washington Post a couple of weeks ago as “a season loaded with faith, hope and parity,” it should be more obvious than ever that the stories that matter aren’t just the battles of giants. Let’s remember how tenuous the rope the Ducks walked against the University of Idaho and Boise State was two weeks in.
As a storyteller, I’ll never forget watching Oregon vs Ohio State. There’s a property that makes those top-5, top-whatever games special — a level of quality that you just don’t get, even among the chaos of unranked-versus-ranked teams.
I’ll also never forget the incredible upset that Vanderbilt University pulled off against the University of Alabama earlier this year. That was as special as any game this season. It wouldn’t have been possible in an over-innovated world where this “Super League” exists.