Mailbag: Impact of the Big 12 MBB schedule, Pac-12 expansion geography, Sac State in the FBS, UW in the super league 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.
And if you missed it, last week’s mailbag looked at the uninspiring Week 1 schedule for next season (although there are some intriguing games on the West Coast).
Will the Big 12’s television-driven February schedule come back to haunt the conference in March when the top teams are physically and mentally exhausted? — @bogeycat85
There is an inherent risk, for sure. But first, let’s recap the situation for readers who missed the Hotline report, published last week, about the Big 12’s men’s basketball scheduling strategy.
Generally, the 18-game round robin is back-loaded to provide the Big 12’s fans and media partners with the best matchups when attention on the regular season is greatest: after the College Football Playoff and the NFC and AFC championship games, in the five- or six-week stretch with only the Super Bowl as football competition.
Of the 20 matchups between the conference’s top six teams (Arizona, BYU, Houston, Iowa State, Kansas and Texas Tech), 17 were scheduled for late January, February and early March.
The TV partners are happy, especially ESPN. The Big Monday matchups with Big 12 teams have drawn strong ratings. Arizona-Kansas, for example, drew 1.8 million viewers, according to ESPN, which was 20 percent above the average Big Monday audience.
The past week has not been kind to the conference on the injury front. Two of its best players, BYU wing Richie Saunders and Texas Tech forward JT Toppin, suffered season-ending knee injuries that will greatly undermine the conference’s prospects for success in the NCAA Tournament. Also, Arizona forward Koa Peat is out indefinitely with a muscle strain.
In no way, shape or form are we suggesting the stout February schedules for those teams are responsible for the injuries. After all, Toppin was hurt against Arizona State, which is closer to the bottom of the conference than the top.
Could the grind of the long season have somehow contributed to the injuries? That’s entirely possible. This is the time of year when fatigue sets in, and fatigue leads to injuries. But that’s true of players everywhere, in all conferences, against all sorts of schedules.
In our view, more time is required to determine the impact — if any — of the rugged February schedule on the Big 12’s top teams.
If the NCAA Tournament arrives and teams look gassed, or coaches reference fatigue as a concern, then perhaps the conference should reassess the approach. Until then, we plan to enjoy the stellar competition.
Also, it’s worth noting how the Big 12 has been deeply fortunate with the overall results: The teams expected to have stellar seasons back when the schedule was set in September all have played to, or exceeded, expectations. That doesn’t typically happen (anywhere).
But the conference played it exactly right by placing its best inventory in the late-season window that receives the greatest attention.
We would have done exactly the same thing.
Do you think the Pac-12 will stay relatively regional with any further football expansion? Or will the conference try and pick off the top of the Group of Six teams when those TV deals are up? — @MU96___
This is really two questions in one because of the differing timelines.
The Pac-12 has made no secret of its desire to add a ninth football-playing member as soon as a quality option becomes available — if that’s in time for the 2027 season, conference executives would be delighted.
But the binding media rights agreements for schools that could be expansion targets (e.g., the American and Mountain West) don’t expire for years.
By then, the entire major college football structure could have evolved into something new.
The location of any new members (geography) is a secondary consideration, with one caveat: We don’t believe the conference would add just one school from the Eastern or Central Time Zones. It would have to be a combination of two or three.
That’s not as complicated as it seems, because any circumstance that sparks serious interest in joining the Pac-12 would undoubtedly affect multiple schools.
To this point, we don’t envision members of the American having interest in the Pac-12. The most likely expansion targets are Mountain West campuses (e.g., UNLV), but even that feels unlikely at the moment.
The Hotline offered our opinion in the fall of 2024, and it hasn’t changed: The Pac-12 added the schools it had to have (Boise State, Gonzaga and San Diego State) in order to survive in the new era.
Unless the top football programs in the American (Memphis, Tulane and South Florida) were to realign in unison, there are no moves remaining on the chessboard that could materially alter the intermediate-term outlook for the conference.
Any chance that the vast majority of schools which will never have a realistic chance of competing in football decide to separate the rest of their sports back into geographical conferences while football is either in a super league or non-existent? — Michael M
There is nothing hypothetical about this topic. We’re seeing it unfold in real time.
Northern Illinois is moving football to the Mountain West and placing its Olympic sports, including basketball, in the Horizon League.
North Dakota State is shifting its terrific FCS football program into the Mountain West and leaving everything else in the Summit League.
Sacramento State is parking football in the MAC and most of its other sports in the Big West.
In each case, realignment was driven by football. The trick was finding a regional home for the Olympic sports in order to limit travel.
That’s exactly the model for a super league, if it materializes. And it could be the reality for Olympic sports in the absence of a super league.
Only the most delusional college sports executives — there aren’t many, but they exist — believe asking Olympic sports to crisscross the country for conference play is in the best interest of the athletes.
A return to regional conferences for all sports except football cannot come soon enough.
In your opinion, are we only scratching the surface with today’s NCAA player gambling problems? How much deeper will it go? — MrEd315
There will be more, for sure. But the oversight mechanisms are such that the chance of a massive scandal, with multiple players at high-profile schools affecting the outcome of games, is below 50 percent.
Are we naive? Perhaps. But the combination of self-policing (by sportsbooks) with the online system of checks and balances (e.g., US Integrity) is formidable.
The second-level issues will persist. How do we define “second level”? A federal indictment unsealed last month revealed players on 17 Division I basketball teams engaged in a point-shaving scandal, but none of the schools named were needle-movers for the general public.
That’s a second-level issue, in our view.
(In theory, NIL and revenue-sharing at the power conference level will alleviate many of the financial pressures that drive players to become involved in point-shaving schemes.)
But there’s another aspect to sports betting that doesn’t receive enough attention: the impact of proposition bets on player health and safety.
A group of Big Ten athletes recently implored NCAA president Charlie Baker to continue pushing for limits on prop bets, which too often result in harassment and threats aimed at the players.
In fact, we could envision a serious consequence from threats to athletes over prop bets surfacing before there’s a major scandal involving top teams in football or men’s basketball.
Will Washington be part of the eventual 40-team super league? — @_Redda17
Washington’s participation seems likely even if the super league includes just 32 schools — and we believe the number will be closer to 30 than 50 — but it should not be assumed.
The current trajectory works. As long as the Huskies win eight or nine games per year and finish in the top half of the Big Ten, we like their chances to make the cut.
The Seattle market would be desirable to whatever media and private equity companies broadcast and fund the super league. And while the Huskies aren’t a true blue blood of the sport, their brand is indisputably on the next tier.
But if the super league is just 28 or 32 teams and UW experiences a multi-year slippage in performance, attendance, TV ratings, etc., the situation could get dicey.
Our slight skepticism on this matter is rooted in the financial challenges facing the athletic department — specifically, the combination of debt, half shares of Big Ten media revenue, stout intra-conference competition and a solid-but-not-ideal NIL game.
That combination could serve to undermine football success.
To be clear: We don’t expect that scenario to play out. But if you’re ranking the likelihood of super league participation for the West Coast schools in the Big Ten, the Huskies would be a clear third behind USC and Oregon, but ahead of UCLA.
A question to ponder: If a super league is inevitable and history could be reversed, would Washington have been better off remaining in the Pac-12 and dominating (along with Oregon) than joining the Big Ten as a perennial fifth- or sixth-place finisher?
Is Sacramento State moving to the Football Bowl Subdivision, no matter the cost, a strategy to mitigate the effects of the future enrollment cliff? — @sfw4422
At the broadest level, yes. And the Hornets are hardly alone. University presidents across the country, and through multiple levels of NCAA divisions, are turning to athletics generally and football specifically as a marketing tool.
Heck, the Hotline made that connection back in the summer of 2024, when the Big 12 revealed it was considering private equity.
The strategy makes sense. No other facet of the university is more visible than football. Nor is the investment as steep as it would otherwise be: In a generic sense, schools get more brand value by plowing $25 million into football annually to fund a winner than by spending $25 million annually on a marketing agency for good PR.
Sacramento State is an extreme example. The concessions made to join the MAC, which include paying the travel costs for MAC teams to play in Sacramento, are like nothing we have seen before in the realignment game.
Whether president Luke Wood’s plan provides the desired benefits remains to be seen. (Ultimately, the Hornets would like to join a thriving, reconstructed Pac-12.)
But we commend his commitment to the mission. Strategically, it’s valid.
The new Pac-12 is basically letting teams keep half of their NCAA Tournament units. Does partial retention better incentivize winning, or does equal sharing ultimately build a stronger league? — @CurtisBlack
This is a topic the Hotline has discussed with industry contacts for many years. We agree with the consensus: an equal-share revenue model is preferred … unless it could lead to the implosion of the conference.
And because of elevated financial pressures in the revenue-sharing era, the likelihood of equal distributions sparking a collapse are increasing exponentially.
That said, readers should know there are two options for the unequal-share model: 1) Conferences can set aside a percentage of revenue for performance-based distributions from the CFP or NCAA Tournament; or 2) Conferences can create tiered distributions from the centralized media rights revenue.
The Big Ten was all set to implement an unequal-share approach as part of commissioner Tony Petitti’s private capital plan until Michigan and USC blocked the entire endeavor.
We have no doubt the conference eventually will construct a model that spins off more cash to Ohio State and Michigan, to keep the anchor schools happy, just as the ACC recently implemented a performance-based revenue plan in response to the lawsuits brought by Clemson and Florida State.
Could the SEC follow the ACC? Sure. But if that scenario ever becomes reality, the super league will be just a few months away.
How long until Cal coach Tosh Lupoi turns the Bears into a winner comparable to the Jeff Tedford teams of the 2000s? — @albnomaam
How much time do you have?
We say that with only a sliver of sarcasm because the Tedford-era teams were ranked in the end-of-season AP poll for three consecutive years (2004-06). That equals the number of times the Bears have been ranked in the final AP poll in all other seasons over the past half-century.
Could the Bears have a first-rate year under Lupoi? Perhaps. But it could very well prove an outlier. We are skeptical that sustained success is possible.
That view has more to do with the competitive landscape than with Lupoi himself. The challenges are immense for schools that don’t have blue blood tradition and resources.
While Cal should be commended for ramping up its commitment to football under chancellor Rich Lyons, the Bears don’t have machinery comparable to their ACC peers at Miami, Clemson and Florida State.
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