Mailbag: Where Oregon and Washington might fit in the super league, Pac-12 legacy regret, federal funding cuts and loads 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.

If the future of college football in the 2030s is a 48-team super league, what would be your guess at the division with Oregon and Washington? — @jrg6887

First, let’s be clear on the size issue. The proposed super league concepts viewed by Power Four officials feature as many as 70 or 80 teams, while the Hotline has used 48 in hypothetical explanations of what might come.

But we view that as the top-end number. It’s entirely possible that a true super league – if it arises in the early 2030s when the Great Restructuring unfolds – will have 32 to 42 schools.

The only way for blue bloods to receive transformative revenue from media partners would be to keep the circle tight. The networks won’t pay big dollars for the likes of Minnesota, South Carolina or Syracuse. It would be the 18-20 obvious schools, then a second tier.

Too few, and there isn’t enough game inventory.

Too many, and the economics don’t work.

Which of the Pac-12 legacy schools will make the cut?

In our view, USC, Oregon and Washington are the only givens if the super league is limited to 32. They have the requisite combination of on-field success and media value.

If the super league features 42 to 48 schools, then UCLA, Utah, Arizona State and Colorado would come into play – as would Brigham Young and Boise State.

At 60 or 70 schools, Arizona, Cal, Stanford, Washington State and Oregon State become options.

(Please note: That breakdown is based on the presumption that each school’s recent level of competitive success, or failure, remains constant through the decade.)

We would expect the super league to group teams by regions and schedule a substantial amount of cross-division games – something similar to the NFL model.

For the purposes of this exercise, let’s assume there are six divisions with seven teams. The western edition would feature USC, Oregon and Washington, plus some combination of Arizona State, Utah, UCLA, Colorado, BYU and Boise State.

In theory, you could slot the Buffaloes, Utes and the Cougars into a division with schools from the Great Plains, which would free up room in the West Coast division for Arizona, Cal and Stanford.

We haven’t worked through all the details (e.g. scheduling), and there’s plenty of time for that. The current conference structure is likely to hold into the early 2030s because of existing media contracts for the major conferences and the College Football Playoff.

But this much is sure: The next five years will be an audition for what’s next, whether it’s a super league or another round of conference expansion.

Schools in the ACC and Big 12 want to climb into the SEC and Big Ten.

Schools in the Group of Five leagues want to jump into the ACC and Big 12.

Everyone is desperate to move up, and nobody wants to get left behind.

The schools that muster the greatest resources, and deploy those resources effectively, will have the best chance to climb.

Did Washington State and Oregon State consider shutting down their athletic departments after the 2025-26 academic year and applying their remaining proceeds from the dissolution of the Pac-12 to paying off as much debt as possible? I have little confidence a re-structured Pac 12 will “save” WSU and OSU from the financial bind they’re in. — Bob M

It’s entirely possible that a small group of officials in Pullman and Corvallis gave surface-level consideration to the idea of downsizing athletics. But to our knowledge, it was never seriously discussed.

The cost of competing in major college football was extreme during the previous era. With the new Pac-12 and its reduced revenue streams, the challenge will be exponentially greater.

The Beavers and Cougars have spent many years in the red and won’t change that existence using only conference revenue streams. Both need help from central campus. (As do many other athletic departments, including those in the power conferences.)

But the cost of not competing in major college football is arguably more damaging. The sport provides a rallying point for alumni and donors and serves as the primary marketing tool for the university.

Fundraising and visibility would shrivel if the schools opted to shut down athletics.

Think about it this way: The benefit of investing $50 million annually in athletics (with football taking a large percentage) creates more value for the schools than if they paid a marketing company $50 million to enhance the university’s national brand over the course of a year.

Considering that Cal and Stanford will only be making $13 million a year in media revenue for the next five years, was there a chance they would’ve made more (minus travel costs), if they remained in the Pac-12 with Oregon State and Washington State? — @CelestialMosh

Not sure where you got the $13 million figure. To the best of our knowledge, the schools are working through the impact the ACC’s new revenue-distribution plan will have on their partial-share existence.

Remember, the conference is implementing a so-called brand fund in which a percentage of revenue will be paid based on TV ratings over a multi-year period. Meanwhile, Cal and Stanford are set to receive roughly 30 percent of the media distributions over seven years. How those contractual elements impact each other, we cannot state conclusively at this point.

But there’s another element to consider: Each ACC school is expected to receive approximately $13 million annually in College Football Playoff revenue once the new contract cycle begins in 2026. (We consider CFP revenue to be separate and distinct from media rights revenue, which is based on the regular-season TV deal with ESPN.)

Bottom line: There are several moving pieces when attempting to calculate conference revenue for Cal and Stanford.

Would the media deal in a rebuilt Pac-12 with the Bay Area schools exceed what they stand to receive from the ACC in the short term? Probably not.

That said, it’s moot. They had zero interest in remaining in the decimated Pac-12, along with WSU and OSU and whichever schools were added subsequently. It did not work for them institutionally, academically or competitively (for their Olympic sports).

Even if the Cougars and Beavers could have somehow guaranteed the Bay Area schools $15 million annually in media revenue, their hearts and minds were dead set on the ACC given, of course, that the Big Ten wasn’t an option.

With everything that the 10 departing Pac-12 presidents know today, is there anything they wish they would have done differently to keep the conference intact? – @jimmy0726

Well, five of the departed schools (Arizona, UCLA, Cal, Stanford and Colorado) have changed presidents since Aug. 4, 2023, while two more (USC and Washington) are currently undergoing leadership transitions.

And if we extend that timeline to the early 2010s, when the Pac-12 began its series of strategic missteps that created the circumstances for collapse, only Arizona State president Michael Crow remains in place.

In conference realignment, those responsible for the earth-moving decisions are rarely around for the fallout.

That’s certainly true in the Pac-12, where the Holy Trinity of Incompetence (commissioners Larry Scott and George Kliavkoff and the university presidents) has moved on … albeit with flush bank accounts and little accountability.

We haven’t asked the current and former presidents about their regrets, if they have any. But two blunders stand above the rest: Delaying expansion; and seeking an exorbitant valuation from ESPN.

Had the conference added San Diego State and SMU at discounted revenue shares soon after the Los Angeles schools departed, then negotiated reasonably with ESPN, the process would have been wrapped up in the fall of 2022.

The Pac-12 would have moved forward with 12 schools, footholds in Dallas and Southern California and a media deal worth $30 million to $35 million annually (on average).

Instead, Kliavkoff and the presidents took the long road to destruction.

Are we seeing concerns from universities about operating deficits related to the reduction in federal grant funding impacting athletic department budgets? – @AutzenDome

The Hotline has not seen tangible evidence, yet. But there is immense concern in athletic departments across the country.

Cuts in federal funding could have mammoth repercussions for university budgets and therefore impact the level of institutional support provided to athletics.

Some universities are staring at the loss of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars.

Many athletic departments depend on tens of millions in campus support in order to balance their budgets.

That math is easy to calculate: 1 + 1 = big trouble.

For the moment, an injunction issued by a district judge in Boston has paused the Trump administration’s plans to axe the funding. But it’s worth monitoring, for sure.

With a 12-team College Football Playoff, does ranking 25 teams make sense? Instead, why not rank 14 teams and, at least through the 2025-26 season, the top five conference leaders and the Group of Five representative (if they aren’t in the top 14)? – Jon Joseph

The weekly rankings only make sense for ESPN, which loves the programming. For the CFP itself, the process is harmful: It undermines faith in the committee and trust in the process because, inevitably, contradictions will emerge.

Eventually, the committee boxes itself in. When it comes time to reveal the only rankings that matter – those created after the conference championships – it’s forced into bad decisions.

Ranking just 14 teams would limit the margin for error, but we cannot envision ESPN agreeing to a truncated version. And because the weekly show is part of the CFP contract, changes likely would result in a lower rights fee.

That said, the process could be tweaked for next season. The CFP management committee, which consists of the 10 FBS conference commissioners and Notre Dame’s athletic director, might move to a straight seeding model: Participating teams would be seeded according to their ranking, with no special positioning reserved for the highest-ranked conference champions.

It’s a necessary move, in our view, but one that requires unanimity in order for the change to be implemented for next season.

The ACC, Big 12 and Group of Five might be hesitant to agree to any tweaks that benefit the Big Ten and SEC.

Who will be the Pac-12’s eighth football member? – @JMCoachPlatz

The Hotline has viewed Texas State as the most likely (and most sensible) candidate for several months, and we’re sticking to that prediction.

Yes, membership for the Bobcats presents challenges.

Their football program joined the FBS in 2012 and doesn’t possess a history of success and, of course, the geography would make travel tricky, especially for basketball and the Olympic sports teams.

(The campus is located in San Marcos, in the booming corridor between San Antonio and Austin.)

But the Pac-12 must prioritize growth with the next media rights cycle in mind. Expansion today is about acquiring chips for tomorrow, And by tomorrow, we mean the end of the decade. The conference will sign a short-term media agreement and start another round of negotiations in four or five years.

Securing a foothold in Texas, where football is king, offers the best opportunity for the Pac-12 to increase its value.