The Hotline mailbag publishes weekly. Send questions to wilnerhotline@
And if you missed it, last week’s mailbag looked at moving the college basketball regular season (and NCAA Tournament) back a few weeks to escape the football shadow.
It’s assumed that college football will eventually form a super league. Is there any movement for a college basketball version? Or would that have too many negative effects on the NCAA Tournament? — @MarcSheehan006
The likelihood of a football breakaway seemingly increases by the week as the sport struggles to create a framework acceptable to the Big Ten and SEC.
However, the timing and shape are unknown.
Our presumption is the rupture would come in the early 2030s, concurrent with the expiration of major media rights agreements, but it could be earlier or later.
There are several options for the structure. Would the SEC and Big Ten simply add the top remaining brands (Notre Dame, Florida State, etc.) and leave the other conferences behind? Would the blue bloods in both leagues break away and form an entirely new entity? Would the four power conferences move in unison?
It will all play out over the next three to five years. But no matter what happens, there won’t be a basketball equivalent. A breakaway simply doesn’t work for the sport.
In most respects (operationally, logistically, financially), basketball has more in common with all other college sports than it does with football. Football is the outlier.
As an example, consider Oregon’s operational outlay in the 2025 fiscal year, its first in the Big Ten. The Ducks spent $20.8 million on basketball, $31 million on Olympic sports and $60.8 million on football.
Makes sense, right? Oregon is a football school.
But UCLA is not. Only a handful of schools come close to matching the Bruins’ basketball tradition. But consider their spending last year: $27.5 million on basketball, $43.5 million on Olympic sports and $55.2 million on football.
For the Ducks, football accounted for more than half the budget. For UCLA, a basketball school, football was 44 percent of the budget. It’s an operational behemoth in a way basketball is not.
And if you noticed, the budget figures cited included women’s basketball. That’s another factor: Could the men’s version (legally or otherwise) form a super league without the women? Probably not. And if women’s basketball is breaking off, how would that be received by softball and gymnastics?
Football is different enough from everything else that any untethering could be explained and justified. That’s hardly the case with men’s basketball.
And let’s not forget about the revenue side. Football generates tens of millions of dollars more annually than basketball — partly because of ticket sales but mostly because of media value.
The media rights contracts between TV networks and conferences for regular-season broadcasts generally assign 80 cents of every dollar to football and 20 cents to men’s basketball. (Add the College Football Playoff revenue and the numbers are vastly more lopsided.)
Put another way: Would the media companies pay enough for a basketball super league to make its formation worthwhile? That’s difficult to envision.
Yes, TV ratings are up, and the sport just experienced a terrific regular season. But it’s not valuable enough — partly because the regular season overlaps with football — to justify an order-of-magnitude increase in media rights, even for the top 15 or 20 schools in a super league structure.
Last point: The NCAA Tournament is arguably the best postseason in American sports precisely because of the underdogs. because Princeton can beat Arizona and St. Peter’s can beat Kentucky and Mercer can beat Duke.
Remove that element, reduce the postseason to a tournament involving only the top schools, and you basically have a lightweight version of the NBA playoffs.
That would adversely impact the popularity of the entire sport, including a regular season in which the blue bloods competed only against each other.
Bottom line: A basketball super league isn’t tenable.
If anything, a super league in football would force basketball (and all other sports) to reform into regional conferences, thereby creating a more workable situation for the athletes themselves.
If the future calls for a football super league, what is stopping the top basketball schools from creating their own super league of say 80-100 teams? — @Wazzucoug1996
We included this question because it touches on a point not addressed above: The limited pool of candidates that could, in theory, form a basketball super league.
The football version has 15 or 20 easily identifiable brands, starting with the heaviest of heavyweights (Ohio State, Michigan, Notre Dame, Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Penn State, USC, Oklahoma, Florida State, LSU).
But there’s also a second tier — the light-blue bloods, if you will — that would give the super league needed heft: Miami and Oregon, Tennessee and Iowa, Texas A&M and Nebraska, Washington and Florida.
That’s not the case in basketball, which has only eight or 10 schools that might entice networks to pay substantially more than the current market value: North Carolina, Duke, Kansas and Kentucky, of course, plus Louisville, UCLA, Michigan State, Arizona, Connecticut, Gonzaga and perhaps a few others.
You need at least 30 to create enough game inventory to make the concept work, but there aren’t even 20 that qualify as needle-movers on the ratings front because … most schools care more about football.
Basketball doesn’t clear the bar for a super league in any regard, including the number of qualified schools.
It looks like only two Pac-12 legacy schools will make the men’s NCAA Tournament (Arizona, UCLA). If the old conference had stayed intact, how many more bids? — @CelestialMosh
That’s difficult to even estimate because we don’t know how the intra-conference wins and losses would have broken. Our only recourse is to guess (somewhat wildly) based on the current metrics and resumes.
With that as our guide, it’s reasonable to believe the old Pac-12, if intact, would collect a total of three or four bids.
Arizona and UCLA would lead the way. But only two other legacy schools are remotely close to making the 68-team field this month: Stanford and Cal. With the same rosters and far easier travel, the Cardinal and Bears could have cobbled together a few more wins. That might have been enough for either, or both, to secure an at-large bid.
But that’s probably it. Oregon, USC and Washington were battered by injuries. Washington State, Oregon State, Colorado and Arizona State were not very good. Utah was awful.
It’s clear to the Hotline that Arizona was the only program fully equipped to compete in its new home.
Last week, we explained the challenges facing the West Coast schools now competing in the Big Ten. But it’s not like the Sun Devils, Buffaloes and Utes were ready for life on the court in the Big 12.
The situation is also bleak for the Beavers and Cougars, who have been mediocre in the West Coast Conference.
But keep this in mind: Arizona and UCLA were the flag-bearers for the old Pac-12, with occasional help from Oregon or USC. It was rarely a high-level basketball conference over prolonged stretches.
There was zero reason to think the other 10 schools were set to thrive in their post-realignment worlds.
The old Pac-12 never cared much about men’s basketball, and the new version didn’t add schools that do care, like Grand Canyon, Saint Mary’s and New Mexico. Do you think Gonzaga regrets joining the Pac-12? Would the Zags be better off in the new Mountain West? — @Andybryant316
If the Zags have any regret, it’s rooted in the financial terms of the Pac-12’s media rights deal — everyone always hopes for more money — and not the construction of the conference.
They knew membership would be restricted in order to elevate the competitive metrics (e.g., NET rankings) and limit the number of schools seeking annual distributions: After all, fewer mouths mean larger slices of the revenue pie.
But the Zags are aware of the potential for one or two additions in the next 12 or 18 months (and were part of the decision to invite Texas State last summer). Ideally, the conference would have 10 basketball-playing schools.
If the Pac-12 had not reformed — if Washington State and Oregon State had joined the Mountain West — we firmly believe Gonzaga would have remained in the West Coast Conference.
Why leave a conference with low performers just to join a conference with more low performers?
What do you think of adding Tarleton State and Jacksonville State as football-only schools to the Pac-12? It would give the conference a second campus in Texas and one in Alabama, with the Dallas and Birmingham media markets. — H Hughes
The concept is sound: Continue the push into Texas (with Tarleton State), break new ground into Alabama and add campuses in the Central Time Zone.
But neither school comes close to meeting the competitive bar. Jacksonville State is a member of Conference USA, while Tarleton State is an FCS program.
If the Pac-12 didn’t deem FCS powerhouse North Dakota State or well-located Sacramento State worthy of membership, it would not have interest in the Gamecocks or Texans.
And that’s an important piece to the Pac-12 strategy. The conference only wants schools that add competitive and financial value and are institutionally aligned. It views exclusivity as a good thing at the sub-Power Four level.
One final note: Geography does not guarantee market share.
Just because Tarleton State is located 100 miles from Dallas doesn’t mean it would bring the Dallas market’s media value. Heck, it wouldn’t bring the Dallas market’s media value if the campus were located next to DFW.
If location correlated directly to media value, San Jose State would be in the Pac-12.
The Big 12 is the only Power Four conference with a media rights package that features both Fox and ESPN. What’s the likelihood the next media deal is with one or the other but not both? — James S
An oft-overlooked fact: The ACC and SEC have deals with ESPN but not Fox, while the Big Ten partners with Fox but not ESPN.
Exposure on both works well for the Big 12 but also suggests neither media company believes the conference is valuable enough to warrant exclusivity.
We don’t envision that changing by the time the current rights cycle expires in the summer of 2031.
Also, commissioner Brett Yormark’s media strategy leans into the benefits of multiple partners. That’s why he worked to create sub-licensing agreements with TNT, for example.
Assuming Yormark is leading the next round of negotiations, we fully expect the Big 12 to cut deals with multiple linear partners — and perhaps a few streamers, as well.
Of course, this topic presumes the Big 12 specifically, and the Power Four generally, will remain intact into the early 2030s. There’s a reasonable chance that a radical shift unfolds, leading to an expanded Big 12 or to no Big 12.
The odds of no membership changes occurring around the turn of the decade are fairly slim.
At one point, Arkansas’ NIL collective attempted to get reimbursed by recruit Madden Iamaleava when he flipped to UCLA. Is that common practice? Can the collectives recoup their investment if a player leaves? — @USCtwiiter
The situation is somewhat inscrutable because NIL contracts are typically not made public, each contract is different and every state has its own NIL law.
Also, many of the contracts were not legally binding agreements back in the spring of 2025, when Iamaleava left Arkansas for Westwood. (That was months before revenue sharing became the law of the land in July.)
And don’t forget, the legal process often takes years.
But here’s a good approach: Whether the situation involves an NIL deal or a revenue-sharing contract, assume every dispute will end in a settlement unless there is good evidence to the contrary.
Washington’s leverage with quarterback Demond Williams was an exception in the new world order.
The football schedule is out for the Pac-12. What’s next? — @brycetacoma
How much time do you have?
Seriously, the conference’s to-do list remains lengthy despite full clarity on the three essential issues for 2026-27: the membership structure, the media rights agreements and the football schedule.
We’re hesitant to predict what issue will be resolved next because commissioner Teresa Gould, her administrative team and campus executives can multi-task. In fact, they must multi-task because the new Pac-12 comes online in less than four months.
The to-do list includes bowl arrangements for next season, the men’s and women’s basketball schedules and a barrage of matters involving the Olympic sports — all while monitoring the landscape for expansion opportunities and legislative developments.
Of course, the Pac-12’s bowl lineup won’t be crafted in a vacuum. It depends on the deals cut by other conferences and the availability of games in the western third of the country.
We’ll assume men’s and women’s basketball play true round-robin schedules (16 games), which leaves each team to secure 16 non-conference dates. With the exception of multi-year series, that process usually doesn’t happen until the spring.
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