According to ESPN’s Pete Thamel, the College Football Playoff Board of Managers – which consists of 11 FBS university presidents and chancellors, including Ohio State’s Kristina Johnson – “briefly discussed the possibility of restructuring how college football is governed, with the idea presented of major college football potentially being governed outside of the NCAA” during a Zoom meeting on Monday.
Per Thamel, “these discussions are in such early stages that it could be considered the first steps of a complicated process that would resemble a marathon.” That said, it’s the first known discussion of the idea among CFP leadership, and it’s likely that a new governing body for college football would be under the umbrella of the CFP.
Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith has been one of the most vocal advocates for the idea that the Football Bowl Subdivision should have its own governing body for football separate from the NCAA. He told Eleven Warriors earlier this year that he thinks the NCAA has become too big to properly address issues that are unique to FBS football.
“We’re trying to appease 352 schools that have different missions and are in different spaces,” Smith said in May. “Those schools that offer 85 scholarships, we made a different commitment. The Power 5 and Group of 5 made a different commitment, and we should take football in those schools and set it in its own governance structure.”
