Who doesn't love more football? Well apparently the folks at Nike are following this notion and launching a brand new 7-on-7 national football league that will be franchised in five major cities. CBS Sports first broke the news of the new initiative, and it's got some major proponents already in place. Nike has set up a sponsorship with Marriot, and it's reportedly working on a deal with an airline to transport the league's players.
The league will be in five major cities in the United States — San Francisco, Atlanta, Washington, D.C. and Kansas City. According to CBS, if you want to get involved you'll have to get a team of 25 high school players — $1,000 each to participate the league. Players would have to spend the offseason playing in two tournaments, as well as practicing.
Nike, who declined to comment to CBS about the story, won't be the first shoe company to have this idea. 200 teams will be on hand at Adidas' annual national 7-on-7 competition that is finished off with a national championship of sorts in Atlanta.
The next biggest issue would be the NCAA, and how these tournaments would affect high school recruiting. The NCAA actually has banned seven-on-seven tournaments from campuses in 2011, unless it were sanctioned by a high school association. Since some high school associations don't allow spring football, seven-on-seven tournaments are serving as an alternate. Having this new Nike sponsored tournament would obviously change recruiting in it'll give kids more exposure, but 247Sports' Ryan Bartow points out that at the end of the day, it's still a little different.
"You don't want it to get like basketball recruiting where there are diploma mills," Bartow told CBS. "At the end of the day, it's not real football."
Essentially, the NCAA's problem with it is the seven-on-seven coaches, who are different from the prospects' high school coaches, who potentially separate prospects from their respective high school coaches. The NCAA says this would be considered third-party influences to the kids in terms of their recruiting processes.
Another athletic apparel company, that was left anonymous in the CBS report points out that it'll also change recruiting strictly from a marketing perspective — if these high school kids are playing Nike sponsored 7-on-7 in Nike gear, they might be more inclined to go to a school that has a contract with Nike.
"The bar is being reset," the apparel company told CBS Sports. "What happened is kind of what happened to TV rights. Something was triggered and the market was reset.
"It doesn't surprise me the influence of different brands on helping schools win, helping them recruit. It obviously brings value more than just providing gear."
There is obviously a lot of factors and moving pieces in play here, but if Nike could pull this off and launch it, it would be a pretty big deal.
