This past college football season was rife with commercials aimed at “Saving College Sports,” an initiative geared at combating the rapidly evolving landscape of collegiate sports.

One of the initiative’s goals is to put college sports as a whole under one media package rather than letting conferences build thier own. Naturally, the conferences with the two most successful media rights deals, the Big Ten and SEC, are vehemently opposed to the idea.

So much so that the conferences penned a joint letter to members of Congress, stating their opposition to the lobby efforts of “Saving College Sports.”

One part of the 10-page letter focuses on how the freedom of being able to have thier own media rights deals allows conferences the flexibility to come up with new ideas and methods of generating revenue.

“By keeping control at the conference level, the system retains optionality to pilot new formats, adopt mid-week showcases, experiment with streaming exclusives, and iterate sponsorship models — all of which could help generate substantial additional revenues that could be used to support other sports,” the letter reads.

“But this result can only be accomplished by market forces. A federally created single-seller sports media regime would reduce optionality, slow decision cycles, eliminate college and university autonomy over their own athletic programs without generating more revenue.”

Not the first time

This isn’t Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti’s first time going against the grain of what most college sports fans and programs want. He previously caused quite a stir following reports that he is vouching for the College Football Playoff to expand to 24 teams.

Fans skeptical

College sports fans aren’t so sure the intentions of the joint letter are really to protect the best interests of college sports as a whole, but rather to protect the financial interests of the two mega conferences.

“Is anyone surprised that the SEC and B1G are trying to protect their money here? Pretty obvious that’s the goal in every decision they make now,” one fan wrote on Twitter.

“The momentum for an antitrust exemption or similar alternative to the current state of college athletics is growing. The Big Ten and SEC know this and they are thr true culprits in creating this unsustainable model — not the NCAA itself. They are trying to avoid the future guardrails that are needed to keep some semblance of the college athletics we’ve all grown to love over the last 100 years. If you want real Title IX compliance, Olympic sports to thrive, students earning actual degrees and keeping private equity out of college sports, you sure don’t need to follow this path the Big 10 and SEC are championing. We need Congress to act and stop this madness by bringing real governance back to the NCAA,” someone else wrote.