Mailbag: How ‘poaching penalty’ lawsuit could impact Pac-12 expansion, travel for Olympic sports, Gonzaga’s rev-share edge(?) and more

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

Some questions have been edited for clarity and brevity.

We know the Pac-12 has to add at least one more school. Can you handicap the five most likely candidates? —  @brycetacoma

Yes, the conference remains one football school short of the requirement, but the identity of the eighth member is one of several interconnected, unanswered questions.

We don’t know if expansion will end at eight. We don’t know when the school(s) will be added. And we don’t know if the conference is seriously considering growing the footprint into the Central Time Zone.

The Pac-12 is currently focused on securing a media rights deal for the contract cycle beginning in the summer of 2026. We’re skeptical that any single option could materially alter the overall valuation. The Pac-12 landed the schools it needed, particularly Boise State (football) and Gonzaga (basketball).

There are two ways to answer the specific question posed above.

The short and simple response is this: The next school probably will be UNLV from the Mountain West, Texas State from the Sun Belt, Memphis, Tulane or South Florida from the American or some combination of those five.

The more nuanced, less satisfying answer: It’s too early to know. Give us two months, and the Hotline should have a better feel for the situation. Why two? Because there’s an additional dynamic to consider: The antitrust lawsuit filed by the Pac-12 against the Mountain West in September.

For those unfamiliar, here’s a brief recap.

— The scheduling agreement between the conferences for the 2024 football season included a so-called poaching penalty in the event the Pac-12 offered membership to any Mountain West schools (and they accepted).

— The cost for grabbing five (Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Utah State) is $55 million.

— In September, the Pac-12 initiated legal action against the Mountain West in the Northern District of California over the poaching penalty, asking the court to declare it an antitrust violation. (The legal complaint claims the penalty was designed “to stifle” competition and create an “artificial barrier to entry” for schools to join the Pac-12.)

— Two months later, the Mountain West filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit — a motion based, in part, on the Pac-12 being a willing signatory to the scheduling partnership. (If the contract was illegal, why sign?)

Now skip ahead to the present, and our hesitancy to handicap the next phase of Pac-12 expansion.

The key date in all this, in our opinion, is March 25: The date of the hearing on the Mountain West’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

If Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen rules in favor of the Mountain West and ends the legal challenge, the Pac-12 will be on the hook for $55 million and, perhaps, have no choice but to pursue Texas State.

If van Keulen rules in the Pac-12’s favor and allows the case to proceed, the situation could change dramatically.

Despite all the unknowns, we are fairly certain about one thing: University presidents do not like the disclosure process, and they definitely do not like trials.

If van Keulen allows the lawsuit to move forward, that seemingly would increase the likelihood of a settlement. And if there’s a settlement, that $55 million owed to the Mountain West becomes … $30 million? … $20 million?

Whatever figure is negotiated, it will be less than the Mountain West expected when it offered signing bonuses to UNLV and Air Force in exchange for their commitments to remain in the conference.

Those bonuses are believed to be in the $20 million to $25 million range and are based on $55 million entering the Mountain West’s bank account, courtesy of the poaching penalty.

If the penalty gets sliced in half through a negotiated settlement, UNLV and Air Force could reconsider joining the Pac-12 and American, respectively.

There’s another complicating factor (because there are always complicating factors with realignment), and it’s the timing.

In theory, the Pac-12 needs to offer membership to the eighth football-playing school this spring, so it can give notice-of-departure to its conference before July 1 and avoid an increase in fees. (In many instances, exit fees jump if notice is given within a year of departure.)

But because the hearing on the motion to dismiss the lawsuit is March 25, the legal process might not play out before UNLV hits the 12-month deadline to offer for notice-of-departure. Settlements take time.

Then again, it’s entirely possible that the Pac-12 focuses on Texas State and perhaps the trio of AAC schools this spring.

Or that UNLV is willing to wait, and the membership decision plays out after July 1.

After all, the validity of the Mountain West’s exit fees are facing legal scrutiny. In December, Utah State and Colorado State began legal action against the conference, claiming the fees are “invalid and unenforceable,” according to Yahoo. If that case plays out in favor of the departing schools, it likely would impact UNLV’s exit fees, as well.

Hopefully, that lengthy answer explains why we’re hesitant to offer odds on the Pac-12’s next expansion moves.

The legal proceedings are complicating factors, at least for the next few months.

What is the best solution for the California schools who are now in the Big Ten? Should there be a separate conference for some of the other sports? — @AdrianWRodgers

The best solution for the California schools in the Big Ten (USC and UCLA) is the same as the best solution for the California schools in the ACC (Stanford and Cal): At the earliest possible point — and that’s probably the end of the decade — pull their Olympic sports out of the new conferences and create a regional league.

That could be the Pac-12 3.0, a revamped version of the conference that will arise in the summer of 2026.

It could be an enlarged edition of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, which has existed for years and already includes USC water polo and Stanford beach volleyball, Cal rowing and many other sports teams.

Or it could be a new conference, crafted specifically to meet the competitive and financial demands of the next version of college sports.

Football is different and should be treated as such. Whether the L.A. schools remain in the Big Ten and the Bay Area schools remain in the ACC as football members through the 2030s, we cannot say definitively. The potential for a super league looms over the sport and will have immense consequences.

The same might be true of men’s and women’s basketball — the next move for those sports might be to remain where they are.

But for the dozens of Olympic sports teams at the four California schools, the best option is crystal clear: Return to regional competition, the sooner the better.

Will basketball-only schools (like Gonzaga or those in the Big East) thrive in the future college sports economic environment since they don’t have football sucking up a vast majority of the athletic finances and NIL resources? — @Wazzucoug1996

Great topic and great question, and you’re spot on: There’s a strong case to be made that schools with high-level basketball programs and no football will have an advantage in the next era.

The math itself illustrates why.

Let’s use Gonzaga and Washington as examples (and to be clear, this is merely our view of the finances in Spokane and Seattle):

— There’s a $20.5 million revenue-sharing cap under the terms of the House vs NCAA settlement. Like all Power Four schools, the Huskies are likely to distribute that cash in approximately the following manner: $15 million to the football roster; $3 million to the men’s basketball roster; and $2.5 million to all other sports.

— Gonzaga doesn’t have the wherewithal to share $20.5 million and won’t come close. Which is fine, because the Zags don’t have a football roster to fund. They can allocate as much as they want across the university’s sports teams, using revenue streams and cost cutting to create a pool of cash for the athletes.

Maybe the Zags spend as much on their basketball roster as the Huskies.

Maybe they share more — maybe they share $5 million, not $3 million.

That $2 million difference in total allotment would have a greater impact in basketball than football because it only takes one elite player to alter your fortunes.

We suspect the Big Ten and SEC will find ways to offset any revenue-sharing disadvantage they might encounter with the likes of Gonzaga, Villanova and UConn. But schools in the ACC and Big 12 don’t have as much room to maneuver.

It will be fascinating to watch that dynamic play out.

Regarding the new Big Ten members, what percentage of teams use chartered flights compared to flying commercial? — @coleltaylor

We don’t have a detailed breakdown across the dozens of teams from the four schools. But suffice it to say that football and basketball use chartered flights while many of the other sports — the traditional Olympic sports — do not.

It depends on the school and, to some degree, the circumstances of a particular road trip.

As noted above: The situation must change at the first possible opportunity, which probably arises in 2028-29 when the Big Ten renegotiates its media rights deal and can address membership issues.

Considering that the College Football Playoff selection committee did a bad job of implementing common sense strength-of-schedule devices, shouldn’t they do a blind selection process? What kind of basketball analytics are models for the football playoff? — @mlondo856

We wondered that, as well, and pursued the issue with two of the smartest minds on college basketball: Ken Pomeroy, author of the groundbreaking analytics website KenPom.com, and Kevin Pauga, whose KPI (Kevin Pauga Index) is used by the NCAA selection committee.

Our article was published last week, but here’s a synopsis:

— Yes, the CFP process is flawed, in part because it was designed before conference realignment and therefore cannot properly account for the scheduling misses within each league.

— Another major problem: The lack of clarity into which metrics are being used and how much weight is given to each.

— The basketball analytics don’t translate easily to football because the sample size, in both games and possessions,  is so much smaller in football.

— It’s more difficult to define success in football.

“There are about 70 to 72 possessions for each team in basketball, and you can measure the outcome of every play: You scored or you stopped a team from scoring,” Pauga said. “If there’s one point awarded per possession (in the computer algorithm), that’s 140 points — that’s real data. And you can adjust based on the location of the game and the quality of the opponent.

“But in football, there are only eight or 10 possessions per game for each team, plus all the plays within each possession. How do you measure (analytically) the yards gained on first down? It’s more difficult to quantify. And are we judging the better team based on total points scored? What if your kicker misses three field goals? Does that mean you are the lesser team?

“The data points are more difficult to compute.”

That said, the CFP selection committee could stand to improve its process.

Do the West Coast universities still have student-athletes? Certainly, students can be employees, but to receive a diploma a student must receive an education that is designed to lead to an academic degree. For students who may regularly be absent from campus for four or five days at a time, how do they get the same instruction as non-athlete students? — Mark M

Major college football is big business, and big business simply doesn’t mesh with the traditional approach to higher education. The sport has attempted to navigate that contradiction for decades, but it has gotten immeasurably more difficult recently with realignment, the transfer portal and NIL payments.

It should be pretty clear where the schools stand. If education was truly paramount, Washington would not be in the Big Ten and Stanford would not be in the ACC.

However, the schools are attempting to make the education piece work in the new world by providing academic support to the athletes on road trips. (They did that in the past. The need is simply greater now.)

If the cross-country travel has a material effect, we’ll know soon enough:

Each spring, the NCAA releases the Academic Progress Rate (APR) scores for each school. They measure real-time progress and retention.

In the spring of 2026, the APR scores for the 2024-25 academic year will be released.

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