The Hotline mailbag publishes weekly. Send questions to wilnerhotline@bayareanewsgroup.com and include ‘mailbag’ in the subject line. Or hit me on the social media platform X: @WilnerHotline
Please note: Some questions have been edited for clarity and brevity.
Thought experiment: Somewhere around 2032, the Big Ten and SEC form the “CFP Subdivision.” What’s your list of teams? How many make the playoff? And what does the remainder of the FBS do? — Paul T Brown
Your thought experiment was our magnum opus.
At the end of the 2023 season, the Hotline published a vision for the future of college football, with a focus on the Pac-12.
Yes, we identified the early 2030s as the rupture point. It’s difficult to envision a super league forming earlier because of the conferences’ media contracts.
Yes, we felt the number of teams (24) would be smaller than the 70-something total that have been suggested recently. After all, the TV networks will only pay top dollar for premier brands.
And yes, we addressed the future for teams that didn’t make the super league: A restructuring of the sport along regional lines that, in our view, would lead to the formation of the Pac-12 3.0.
Whether it plays out in that fashion (or close to that fashion) is impossible to know at this point. But a separation is coming, probably in the 2030s, and the Big Ten and SEC will be the prime drivers.
Will they merge into a 40-something school conference that includes the most valuable brands not currently in either league: Notre Dame, Clemson, Florida State and North Carolina? Or will the top football programs in the Big Ten and SEC leave their longstanding homes and form an exclusive club?
(Both outcomes are more likely than the top brands expelling the bottom feeders from their existing conferences because of political and legal hurdles.)
The process matters far less than the end result: The creation of a mini-NFL with regional divisions, a tournament-style postseason and gobs of cash.
Which brings us to an important point: The race for inclusion.
The rest of this decade is critical, folks. Not for USC, Oregon and Washington. They would assuredly receive invitations to a super league that has 32-to-48 teams.
And if we’re being honest, Washington State and Oregon State are probably not making the cut unless the entity grows to 70 or 80 schools.
But for the remaining Pac-12 legacy schools, the next five or six years is vital.
If the super league forms in the mid 2030s and if there are anywhere from 48 to 60 members, success on the field through the 2020s could determine which schools make the cut.
Nobody wants to be excluded.
If you’re excluded, revenue craters, fans interest dwindles and the brand value of your institution eventually drops. (Also, the president and athletic director get fired.)
That’s why Arizona State must continue the success it experienced this season.
That’s why Colorado needs to remain relevant, with or without Deion Sanders, and Utah must reclaim its high ground, without or without Kyle Whittingham.
That’s why Cal and Stanford and Arizona and UCLA must find solutions and overcome their unique challenges.
Any teams that flounder over the next five or six years — any teams that are viewed as second-rate performers with low brand value — could get left behind.
Consider the race for invitations to a super league featuring every school in the SEC (16) and Big Ten (18), the ACC’s big three and Notre Dame. That’s 38 members.
If there are 10 more spots — to create eight divisions of six teams — the Pac-12 legacy schools mentioned above would face competition from the likes of Oklahoma State, Miami, Brigham Young, Duke, Iowa State, SMU and a few others.
One thing will fuel separation: winning.
It’s indisputably more important now, and over the next five years, than ever.
We know the Pac-12 must add at least one more school. Can you handicap the five most likely candidates? — @brycetacoma
My strong suspicion is the Pac-12’s working list of options does not run five deep unless the conference adds a handful from the American Athletic Conference and commits to a 12- or 14-team league.
If the goal is to add one more school, there simply aren’t five worthy candidates that clear the bar competitively and financially — meaning that they would increase the media revenue for the eight schools already committed.
If we eliminate the AAC contingent for the purposes of this exercise, that tight circle of targets assuredly includes Texas State and UNLV at the top. And I don’t believe Sacramento State makes the cut; there’s no indication the conference wants to dip into the FCS ranks.
Why Texas State? For recruiting and media exposure in a massive state with loads of talent, plus access to a Central Time Zone campus for kickoff flexibility. Also, the Bobcats are good enough — they have gone bowling each of the past two seasons.
Why UNLV? The Rebels make as much sense now as they did before the Pac-12’s initial expansion wave in September. They fit in myriad ways.
Yes, the Mountain West seems to have stabilized with the addition of several schools, including Northern Illinois.
But to that, we’d say the following: Nothing is done until there’s a signed media rights agreement.
Our view is exactly as it was during the Pac-12’s year of purgatory after the Los Angeles schools departed. We stated dozens of times that survival was more likely than not but hardly guaranteed, and we placed a 60 percent probability on the conference sticking together. Turns out, reality favored the 40 percent side of the calculation.
That’s how we see the Mountain West situation, with the outcome depending on both the media rights negotiations and the lawsuit filed by the Pac-12 over the so-called “poaching penalty.”
If the Pac-12 wins the lawsuit (or the parties settle) and the Mountain West cannot distribute the dollars it promised UNLV and others, the dynamics could change.
If the media negotiations take an unexpected turn, presumptions could prove erroneous.
All of which is our way of saying: The situation is fluid.
For all the talk about “settling it on the field,” why does college football continue to devalue what happens on the field? If the BCS was blown up because a group of unaccountable humans made an Alabama-LSU rematch, why is the solution to have an even smaller group still create rematches? — @JoCo3Point0
The short answer is the powerbrokers who created the four-team playoff more than a decade ago did not want the top-25 polls or computers to select the participants. So they opted for a process modeled on the NCAA Tournament.
The 13-member CFP selection committee includes ex-players and coaches, plus administrators and even a former journalist. There are term limits and recusal policies.
How long the system lasts is up for debate. The SEC and Big Ten could push for a computer-based process in the next iteration of the CFP, which begins in the 2026 season.
If human subjectivity is replaced by computer algorithms, more weight would be placed on schedule strength. And that, of course, would favor the SEC and Big Ten.
We should start to see clues about the fate of the committee itself, along with several other aspects of the current system — including the top-four seeds going to conference champions — when the commissioners gather in Atlanta in 10 days.
Did the Pac-12 receive $50 million from the 2024 Rose Bowl? If yes, does the money get distributed among Oregon State, Washington State and the 10 departed members? Or do the two remaining schools keep it? — @jimmy0726
The Pac-12 will receive $50 million from the Rose Bowl at some point this year — I believe payouts are made in the spring — and it will receive another $50 million from the Rose Bowl next year, as well.
That money stays with the conference, to be used as the Beavers and Cougars see fit. The 10 departed members don’t get a dime.
Combine the $100 million from the Rose Bowl with the NCAA Tournament units-based revenue (approximately $75 million paid out over six years) and the distributions withheld from the 10 former members ($65 million), and the Pac-12 should have $240 million or so available.
And that doesn’t include the $24 million due to WSU and OSU from the CFP revenue-sharing plan (roughly $6 million each for two years).
It’s enough to supplement athletic operations in Pullman and Corvallis, fund the conference office and Pac-12 Enterprises and use for expansion-related expenses.
What are the schools actually getting out of agreeing to the House settlement? Seems like they are just paying out $20 million without getting anything in return. I don’t see how this stops the NIL pay-for-play from continuing. — @JRSIP
Aside from clarity on the new economic model, the schools are getting very little from the House vs. NCAA lawsuit settlement. Which is why they were the defendants.
The big winners were the plaintiffs — the former and current athletes who will receive NIL back-pay and a share of future school revenues.
(Also victorious: The plaintiffs’ attorneys, who stand to collect hundreds of millions of dollars.)
The schools have enough trouble balancing their books. They wanted no part of sharing revenues with the athletes, much less $20.5 million per year.
And to your point about pay-for-play, we don’t see that skewed application of NIL coming to an end.
Nothing in the House settlement prevents athletes from earning NIL payments for promotional endeavors. And while that’s intended to take the form of true NIL, cash used for recruiting inducements will undoubtedly continue.
We cannot imagine the NCAA creating an effective oversight mechanism, despite its best efforts.
How many games does Stanford coach Troy Taylor have to win next season to keep his job? — @eabrams5500
The Hotline doesn’t view Taylor as being on the hot seat unless, perhaps, the Cardinal goes 0-12. Otherwise, he’ll be back for 2026.
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To this point, he simply has not been given the resources necessary to succeed in the two spaces (NIL and the transfer portal) that have become critical to roster formation in the new era.
It’s as if Stanford’s competition is using an iPhone and Taylor is forced to communicate by carrier pigeon.
That could change with a new university president (Jonathan Levin) and a football general manager (Andrew Luck).
We’ll see how the resource situation plays out, but Taylor’s job should not be in jeopardy.
How long until a player sues the NCAA, claiming the eligibility rules are an unfair labor practice limiting their employment opportunities? — @RockDawg3
I’m sure that process has already started somewhere.
The court ruling in the Diego Pavia case was specific to time spent competing at the junior college level. But eventually, we’ll see an athlete competing at a major college school challenge the traditional four-year eligibility clock.
(Which is basically five years given the redshirt rules, medical exemptions, etc.)
I’ve been looking at the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, and this could be the future after football and basketball leave the NCAA: 15 sports across 14 states with 46 schools and 86 teams. — @CurtisBlack
That’s more than theory. The MPSF, which includes gymnastics, water polo, wrestling and rowing, is the presumed model for the future of college sports. And that could very well include basketball.
Our sense is that football will become a separate entity sometime in the 2030s, with all other sports remaining under the NCAA umbrella.
Realignment has created preposterous travel for Olympic sports, and everyone knows it.
When football breaks off, the college sports industry will reform along regional lines.
How can such a non-ball-knowing, biased hack such as yourself keep a job as a ‘journalist’? Do you ever feel guilty about being so utterly inept at your job and yet presumably still cashing your paycheck? Do you practice at being so obtuse or does it come naturally? — @Flamingmunkey
And yet, on social media, you follow me.
Thank you for that, by the way.
Your ongoing interest in what this “non-ball-knowing, biased hack” has to say is much appreciated.
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