University leaders and other people affiliated with several power conference schools gathered Tuesday in Dallas to discuss a plan to restructure major college football by pooling the media rights of all the current conferences.

Smash Sports, a subsidiary of the private equity firm Smash Capital, has pitched its idea to executives, administrators and board members representing dozens of schools over the past two years.

Tuesday’s meeting was an effort to gather potential stakeholders from across the country to exchange ideas and confirm interest in the plan. The attendees included board members from 15 schools, including Michigan, Penn State, Maryland and USC from the Big Ten, according to multiple sources familiar with the meeting. Board members were not acting as official representatives of their schools and attended in individual capacities, according to one of the people familiar with the meeting. Yahoo Sports reported that LSU president Wade Rousse and TCU president Daniel Pullin planned to attend the meeting.

Smash Sports has engaged with board members around the country as it looks for support from places where conference and school leaders have been resistant to even discussing its proposal.

The Big Ten and SEC, the wealthiest and most powerful conferences in college sports, have shown no interest in the Smash plan or others like it. But the idea of pooling college football broadcast rights has gained traction in Washington with lawmakers as the NCAA and conference leaders have lobbied for a federal law to help them govern college sports.

The Smash plan would take all 138 schools competing at the highest level of Division I out from the umbrella of the NCAA, pull the management and negotiation of media rights contracts away from their conferences and hand those rights to another entity that could have some government backing.

The proposal says the total value of the rights fees distributed to all conferences could more than double if sold together rather than the present environment in which conferences compete against each other.

The pooling of media rights is being pitched as a way to pay for the rising costs of big-time college sports, including athletes now being paid, and has been a hot topic for months.

It would also require Congress to amend the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, which was passed to allow the NFL to pool its teams’ rights together after the league’s efforts to do so were struck down as an antitrust violation by a court.

Texas Tech booster and billionaire businessman Cody Campbell ran television ads during the college football season urging Congress to amend the SBA to clear the way for the pooling of media rights as part of his Saving College Sports campaign.

The Big Ten and SEC have pushed back against the idea and last week distributed a white paper to lawmakers in Washington that disputed the revenue gains projected by Saving College Sports, warned of government interference in distribution of revenue and suggested the conferences would be able to increase the value of media rights better on their own.

Louisville, an ACC school, responded by posting a report by its president, athletic director of board or trustees chairman attacking the Big Ten and SEC’s white paper and supporting the pooling of media rights.

“The math no longer works. And the time for incremental tinkering has passed,” they wrote.

This all comes as college sports leaders are hoping that the SCORE Act, a bill in the House of Representatives, gets a second life after it stalled out last fall and failed to reach the floor for a vote.

President Trump, who signed an executive order directed at college sports last summer, has also signaled that he is ready to re-enter the discussion. Trump has convened a panel of dozens of important figures and sports celebrities to discuss the future of college sports that is scheduled to meet Friday.

The Smash Sports meeting Tuesday in Dallas has no direct ties to Trump’s panel.

Smash Capital first presented to schools the framework for something that looked like a college football super league back in 2024. The plan ended up being dubbed “Project Rudy,” playing off the movie about a walk-on player at Notre Dame.

Around the same time a group called College Sports Tomorrow was pitching a broader plan to encompass all 11 current conferences playing at the highest level of the NCAA’s Division I.

College Sports Tomorrow disbanded its efforts, but Smash Capital formed Smash Sports and stepped up its efforts to reach decision makers on campuses and lawmakers on Capitol Hill, trying to turn their attention to amending the SBA in any potential legislation.