Which college football stadium is No. 1? Plus, what really is a Super League? – The Athletic

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The nation’s best college football stadium is …
After weeks of collecting your votes on the top college football stadium in the country, the 32-team field has been narrowed to one.

Beaver Stadium’s White Out sealed the deal, with voters calling the tradition “chilling,” “unparalleled” and “the best show in all of college football.” Still, this result feels like one of those games where the final score isn’t telling of how close it was. Some voters took this hypothetical matchup to OT, where Happy Valley outlasted Death Valley.
Here are a couple of the voters’ favorite memories of Beaver Stadium:
Thanks everyone for voting. I truly hope you enjoyed this light-hearted, fun, offseason exercise in which I take no responsibility for the results ruining your mood/day/week. Here’s a look at the final bracket.

A group of influential leaders across sports is drawing up a plan that could transform college football as we know it. In a heavily reported story on Tuesday, The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand and Stewart Mandel detailed efforts to create a college football “Super League.”
The group “College Sports Tomorrow” (CST) is at the forefront of the plan. The new model would create a system where member schools would be divided into seven 10-team divisions, joined by an eighth division of teams that could be promoted from the second tier.
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There would be no CFP committee. Instead, the postseason would be comprised of the eight division winners and eight wild cards (determined by record and tiebreakers). Non-football sports would stay in their current conference structure. The CST believes this model would bring more TV value and sustainability to CFB, and Chip Kelly agrees.
If you need a visualization, Sam Khan Jr. worked through what an 80-team, eight-division Super League would have looked like last season.
Andrew joins us to answer a few lingering questions about the Super League. (Read the full story here).
How would the seven 10-team divisions of CST’s model be constructed? And what kind of criteria might be required for a second-tier team to be “promoted” to tier one?
Andrew: The top 70 teams would likely be comprised of the former Power 5 conference teams plus Notre Dame and SMU. They would be split up logically and geographically to preserve existing rivalries and the best matchups.
The second tier could have its playoff, I’d suspect, but, that was not laid out in our reporting. The other option could be the top two teams by record could move up and then you could have a play-in for a third spot between the third and fourth teams. This would be a pretty exciting way to be promoted. I’d guess three teams go up and down each year into the eighth division.
The story says “CST believes there would be added value in negotiating TV deals as one entity and creating broadcast windows that make more sense, much like the NFL’s approach.” What might these broadcast windows look like?
Andrew: One big thing to understand is negotiating as one entity is advantageous. As it stands now in college football, it is like if the NFL negotiated the deals for the AFC East and NFC North separately. It is better for the networks this way.
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With one entity, you could organize the games so you have a prime time, top game of the week on Saturday night (think NFL’s Sunday Night Football for comp) and then maybe a Friday night, as well. Then on Saturday afternoons, you could regionalize games and pool the ratings together. I’m not sure if there is as much added TV value, as one executive said in our story, he thought it may be “naive.”
List the biggest pro and con of CST’s “Super League” plan.
Andrew: The biggest pro is the fact that if you started from scratch with no politics and no preconceived ideas, this is a really smart and strong plan.
The biggest con? You don’t start from scratch. The SEC, Big Ten, ESPN, Fox and Notre Dame have the most power going forward. Their job is to look out for all their members, in the case of the league commissioners, and their shareholders, in the case of the networks, so that needs to be overcome.
The forthcoming lawsuit cases or settlements are the wild cards that could lead to an outcome we may not envision right now.
Bruce Feldman’s NFL mock draft published yesterday with selections made based on conversations with dozens of college football coaches and NFL sources. Here’s something I’m interested in after reading Bruce’s projection: How high will Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy go?
Bruce’s top four selections are all QBs: Caleb Williams ➡️ Chicago Bears, Jayden Daniels ➡️ Washington Commanders, Drake Maye ➡️ New England Patriots and McCarthy ➡️ Minnesota Vikings. Other projections from The Athletic have McCarthy going:
McCarthy spoke about his rising draft stock at Michigan’s pro day.
Here’s what one of Bruce’s sources said about McCarthy:
“I think too many people are getting caught up trying to look at box scores instead of watching film. He makes a lot of plays for them after the play breaks down. There’s some ‘wow’ stuff in there. He’s on a dead sprint, and he makes some perfect throws. When he has to get out and make a play, he can really do it.”
Minnesota has its quarterback of the future. He was formerly committed to Kalen DeBoer and the Washington Huskies. Get up to speed on Big Ten recruiting news today from Antonio Morales.
Deion Sanders enters Year 2 at Colorado with the same bold personality. But as the Buffs return to the Big 12, the question is: Is his strategy working?
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Nebraska may look like it has its new starter in former five-star QB Dylan Raiola. But spring practice is a level playing field in Lincoln.
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(Top photo: Scott Taetsch / Getty Images)

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Jayna Bardahl is a college football staff editor for The Athletic. She has worked as an editor and reporter covering Big Ten football and men’s basketball, and was an intern at The Boston Globe, where she covered the Boston Red Sox and New England Patriots. Follow Jayna on Twitter @Jaynabardahl

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