College Sports

Pac-12 media deal timing and quality comps to the ACC, Big 12

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. In 2026, will the new Pac-12 be as competitive, or greater than, the likes of the ACC and Big-12? — […]

Published

1 month ago

June 6, 2025

Your Sports Nation

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.

In 2026, will the new Pac-12 be as competitive, or greater than, the likes of the ACC and Big-12? — @eric_zetz

The Hotline has given this matter much thought recently while publishing a series of columns on the College Football Playoff controversy.

The conference hierarchy in 2026 and beyond is interconnected to any analysis of CFP access models, whether it’s the automatic qualifier format (4-4-2-2-1) favored by the Big Ten or the at-large format (5+11) preferred by the Big 12, ACC, SEC and Pac-12, as commissioner Teresa Gould said this week.

(In our view, the Big 12 and ACC have no choice but to push for 5+11, because the alternative is the end of those conferences as we know them.)

The Hotline does not believe — not for a second — that the rebuilt Pac-12 will be as competitively successful as the ACC and Big 12 in the next era. Although to be fair, those conferences are not entirely comparable, either.

If quality depth is the standard, the Big 12 is superior to the ACC. No conference in major college football can match the Big 12 for parity, which is both a blessing and curse.

But if judging by the number of championship-caliber programs, the ACC possesses a clear edge over the Big 12. It has two programs capable of winning the national title, Clemson and Florida State. Until proven otherwise, the Big 12 has none. (The last current Big 12 school to win it all was Colorado in 1990.)

Using either standard, the ACC and Big 12 are a level above the rebuilt Pac-12.

But here’s a question worth pondering: Is the rebuilt Pac-12 closer in quality to the ACC and Big 12 than the ACC and Big 12 are to the SEC and Big Ten? Which gap is larger?

That discussion also depends on the framing — on how you define the strength of a conference. We believe the flaws in the Big 12 (lack of elite programs) and the ACC (lack of quality depth) are significant enough, relative to the SEC and Big Ten, to make the topic worthy of tracking in the upcoming season.

For the rebuilt Pac-12 to be closer in quality to the ACC and Big 12 than they are to the SEC and Big Ten in a given season, two benchmarks are required:

— Boise State must be Boise State.

Conferences are often judged by the success of their top brands. If Ohio State and Michigan are both mediocre, the Big Ten will be viewed as having a subpar season. (Same with Georgia and Alabama in the SEC.)

Boise State is the rebuilt Pac-12’s premier football brand by a clear margin. The Broncos must have a Top 15/20-caliber season in order for the Pac-12’s reputation to rise.

— At least two of the following four teams also must be ranked: Washington State, Oregon State, Fresno State and San Diego State.

If the legacy Pac-12 programs flounder with the arrival of the Mountain West contingent, the national narrative won’t be, “The newcomers must be really good to outperform the Beavers and Cougars.” Instead, the narrative will be, “See, the rebuilt Pac-12 is no better than the old Mountain West.” One of them must win nine or 10 games on a consistent basis.

The Aztecs and Bulldogs will have a greater role in shaping the Pac-12’s reputation than the likes of Utah State and Colorado State because of their locations and their recent history of success — of regularly beating the legacy Pac-12 schools, cracking the Top 25 rankings and producing 10-win seasons.

Put another way: There’s a path for the rebuilt Pac-12 to be seen as closer in quality to the ACC and Big 12 than those conferences are to the SEC and Big Ten, but it hinges on the performance in non-conference games (obviously!) and which teams are leading the way.

If Boise State finishes as an 11-win Pac-12 champion, with Washington State and SDSU, for instance, both sitting on nine victories, the conference will look much stronger than it would if, for instance, Colorado State or Utah State finished on top.

That’s the nature of narratives. Brand success matters at every level of the sport.

From your standpoint, what would be the incentive for a school like UNLV to arrange (in mediation) a move to the Pac-12? Is it financial stability? Conference strength? — @BobhornOrAgcat

UNLV is contractually locked into the Mountain West, so the question is moot … unless, perhaps, the conference cannot meet its financial obligations.

The poaching penalty and exit fee lawsuits have, in total, roughly $150 million at stake. If only half that amount enters the Mountain West’s bank account, the distributions promised to the Rebels and others could be impacted.

Would that be enough to spur UNLV to leave? Would it change their legal commitment?

We don’t have clarity on those matters. (Few do.) And because neither the Pac-12 or Mountain West has signed a media rights agreement, there’s a leap-of-faith element for the Rebels with either course of action.

The Hotline’s view hasn’t changed: UNLV’s administration made an epically bad decision to remain in the Mountain West through the 2020s.

Our assumption is the Pac-12 would welcome the Rebels if they had a change of heart, but only for the right price. They are not a must-have school. There are no must-have schools remaining for the Pac-12. It secured the three it had to have (Boise State, San Diego State and Gonzaga) last fall.

Will Texas State receive a full share after this Pac-12/Mountain West mediation mess? I feel the Pac-12 has lost leverage on that front, unless North Texas or UTSA become a serious alternative. — @vince_per

We can’t answer that question without knowing, at the very least, the outcome of the mediation. How much of the $55 million owed to the Mountain West in poaching fees will the Pac-12 retain or relinquish?

And would the schools agree to use whatever pot of cash exists to lure Texas State, which would offer vital access to football-crazed Texas.

In our view, leverage remains with the Pac-12: The Bobcats would be foolish to pass on the chance to join a conference with Boise State football and Gonzaga basketball, especially when the annual media rights payments likely will triple or quadruple what they receive in the Sun Belt.

But it’s not entirely clear to the Hotline that anyone in the Pac-12 will receive a full share, at least in the traditional sense. The conference is considering a revenue distribution model that rewards and incentivizes success, much like the ACC has implemented.

Exactly how it will be structured, we cannot say.

The conference could use postseason revenue (NCAA Tournament and CFP) to fund an unequal distribution of cash. Or it could include a portion of the media rights revenue in the pot, as well.

What do you think about NIL and its impact on college football and basketball. And just a tad on the rest of the sports, too? I believe it will be the end of college sports as we’ve known it for so long. — Bo L

The impact of NIL, especially when combined with the transfer portal, has been momentous across many sports. Texas Tech’s success in softball, fueled by the arrival of million-dollar-pitcher NiJaree Canady from Stanford, is all the proof you need.

To the extent that amateurism mattered to your enjoyment of the competition, maybe this era marks “the end of college sports as we’ve known it.”

But the Hotline doesn’t know many college football and basketball fans who are no longer watching or attending because players are getting paid.

As the late, great Chris Dufresne, of the LA Times, used to say: “Everyone has an alma mater.”

And that’s true whether your quarterback is getting $2 million in NIL or nothing in NIL.

Media deal timeline for the Pac-12? @TonyOnly_

One month after the lawsuits are resolved.

I hope that’s specific enough for you, because it’s as specific as the Hotline can possibly be.

Think about the situation from the standpoint of ESPN, The CW or Fox executives:

Why commit tens of millions of dollars over time to a conference that has two major lawsuits unresolved — lawsuits that could impact the membership structure, competitive success and overall outlook.

What if the Pac-12 and Mountain West end up with a court trial?

What if the Mountain West takes the Pac-12 to the cleaners?

We view those outcomes as extremely unlikely. But why would network executives take the chance? It would be tantamount to financial malpractice.

They want legal clarity and financial certainty.

The court-ordered stay of the poaching penalty lawsuit expires July 15, so we expect resolution to the mediation by that point. From there, the media rights piece should wrap up fairly quickly.

If the Pac-12 had played an eight-game conference schedule from 2014-23, would it have avoided the endless cannibalism and gotten a team in the playoffs consistently enough to still be around today in its original form? — Will D

Admittedly, the Hotline has not plowed through 10 seasons of data to offer a definitive answer. But our hunch is that yes, swapping a conference game for a non-conference cupcake might have resulted in the extra win for a given team in a given season and propelled the Pac-12 champion into the CFP more often than was actually the case.

Pac-12 teams participated in the four-team event in 2014 (Oregon), 2016 (Washington) and 2023 (Washington) and just missed on several other occasions.

If Stanford had played Sacramento State instead of Oregon in 2015 … if Oregon had played Idaho instead of Arizona State in 2019 … the Pac-12 might have been better represented in the CFP.

(Also, idiotic scheduling strategies, like asking teams to play Friday night road games after Saturday road games, contributed to a multi-year competitive malaise.)

Would more CFP teams have saved the conference? We aren’t so sure.

USC and UCLA likely would have left for the Big Ten anyway. And it’s unrealistic to think ESPN’s media rights offer would have been substantially higher in the fall of 2022 based on one or two additional playoff bids in the pre-COVID era.

The Hotline loves alternative history and hypothetical scenarios. But in this case, it’s difficult to connect a one-game change in the conference schedule to a Pac-12 survival scenario.

The seeds of destruction were largely rooted in off-the-field issues.

Is high school recruiting much less important because of the transfer portal? Players can develop at smaller schools who weren’t four- or five-star recruits but have grit and heart and the ability to improve. — @chipe

It’s absolutely less important, at least at the highest levels of the college football food chain.

The Power Four programs can swap out 25-to-33 percent of their rosters each year using the transfer portal, with Colorado as the extreme example under coach Deion Sanders. That said, strong high school recruiting, player retention and roster cohesion remain the prime ingredients for success.

At the lower end of the chain, in the Group of Five and the FCS, high school recruiting remains critical.

Those programs typically lose their top talents to the heavyweight schools through the transfer portal and NIL offers. Without quality replacements on the roster and ready to step in, consistent success is elusive and regression is, in many cases, inevitable.

Will the Pac-12 do anything to regain autonomous status back? Or has that ship already sailed? — @CelestialMosh

For those unfamiliar, “autonomous” is a legislative term established a decade ago. The so-called Autonomy Four conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC) have some freedom to set their own rules within the broad NCAA structure. The Pac-12 might seek to regain A-4 status, but the odds are long.

Far more common in the college sports lexicon is the term “Power Four,” which used to be the Power Five and is specific to the College Football Playoff governance and revenue distribution models.

There is no chance of the Pac-12 regaining power conference status, in part because the term Power Four is no longer material. The Big Ten and SEC control the format for 2026 and beyond. The ACC and Big 12 can provide input but have no material authority.

Effectively, the CFP structure now has three tiers: the Power Two, the Other Two and the Group of Five.

I haven’t seen it made public how much The CW is paying for Pac-12 football. Are you able to share that amount? — @cougsguy06

Clarity on this front should emerge next spring, when the Pac-12 releases its tax returns for the 2024-25 fiscal year. The statement of revenue will include whatever cash entered the conference’s coffers from the media rights deal with The CW and Fox during the 2024 season.

Our hunch is the amount paid by The CW was roughly $1 million per game, and that’s likely the case for the 2025 media deal announced in April, as well.

But revenue for WSU and OSU during these transition seasons was a secondary consideration to exposure on linear (broadcast and cable) networks. And the deals with The CW, Fox, ESPN and CBS are providing plenty of exposure.

*** Send suggestions, comments and tips (confidentiality guaranteed) to wilnerhotline@bayareanewsgroup.com or call 408-920-5716

*** Follow me on the social media platform X: @WilnerHotline

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College Sports

New NIL enforcement targets collectives, deals must serve ‘valid business purpose’

A new college sports enforcement arm charged with regulating name, image and likeness payments to athletes issued guidance Thursday that could make it extremely difficult for school-affiliated collectives to get their deals with athletes approved. The recently approved House settlement, which took effect on July 1, established a clearinghouse, called NIL Go, that must approve […]

Published

8 minutes ago

July 10, 2025

Your Sports Nation

The recently approved House settlement, which took effect on July 1, established a clearinghouse, called NIL Go, that must approve all third-party deals for more than $600. The two main requirements for those deals are that they’re for a “valid business purpose” and within a fair-market “range of compensation.”

The goal is to prevent schools from utilizing booster-driven entities to funnel payments to recruits and transfers as a workaround to the $20.5 million revenue-sharing cap.

Guidance issued Thursday by the College Sports Commission said that “an entity with a business purpose of providing payments or benefits to student-athletes or institutions, rather than providing goods or services to the general public for profit, does not satisfy the valid business purpose requirement set forth in NCAA Rule 22.1.3.”

It then cited as an example a collective that “reach(es) a deal with a student-athlete to make an appearance on behalf of the collective at an event, even if that event is open to the general public, and the collective charges an admission fee (e.g., a golf tournament).” And, “The same collective’s deal with a student-athlete to promote the collective’s sale of merchandise to the public would not satisfy the valid business purpose requirement for the same reason.”

A message Thursday seeking comment from The Collective Association was not immediately returned.

In the four years since NIL took effect in 2021, collectives affiliated with specific schools have made hundreds of millions in deals with athletes just like those described in the examples. They pool funds from donors and boosters and use them to license the NIL rights of specific athletes in exchange for appearances and social media posts.

College sports leaders have long lamented that those deals are de facto pay-for-play inducements, not legitimate endorsement deals.

“For somebody to just slide you a few dollars because they want you to come or stay at a certain school and call it NIL, that’s make-believe, that’s not a real thing,” Purdue athletic director Mike Bobinski recently told NBC Sports.

Critics, though, believe any attempt to restrict how much athletes can make and by whom will eventually be declared another antitrust violation, much like several recent decisions that went against the NCAA. One distinction is that CSC and NIL Go were created by the Power 5 conferences, not the NCAA.

Ohio State made headlines last year when it disclosed that its football roster was earning a combined $20 million, most of it coming from one of two Buckeye collectives. Roster payrolls at the top programs have since escalated well beyond $20 million. Knowing the House settlement was coming, many collectives “frontloaded” payments for this coming school year so they would not be subject to clearinghouse approval.

In a series of posts on X on Thursday, Dalton K. Forsythe, director of Utah State’s Blue A Collective, criticized NIL Go for technical issues, then said, “We’re hearing from peers across the country: nearly 100 percent of collective-backed NIL deals are being denied, regardless of size or structure.”

He continued, “The College Sports Commission has taken the position that collectives cannot serve a ‘valid business purpose’ — a standard that was never clearly communicated before implementation.”

(Photo: Kirby Lee / USA Today Sports)

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College Sports

UMaine hockey adds new assistant coach with NCAA championship pedigree

The University of Maine men’s ice hockey team announced a new assistant will be joining head coach Ben Barr’s staff this coming season. Rick Bennett, who led Union College to an NCAA Division I championship in 2014, is bringing more than 20 years of college coaching experience to the Black Bears bench. UMaine formally announced […]

Published

12 minutes ago

July 10, 2025

Your Sports Nation

The University of Maine men’s ice hockey team announced a new assistant will be joining head coach Ben Barr’s staff this coming season.

Rick Bennett, who led Union College to an NCAA Division I championship in 2014, is bringing more than 20 years of college coaching experience to the Black Bears bench. UMaine formally announced his hiring Thursday afternoon.

“Rick is one the most genuine people I’ve ever met,” Barr said in a press release. “Maine Hockey is fortunate to have him on staff.”

The addition marks a reunion of sorts for Barr and Bennett, who served together as assistants at Union under then-head coach Nate Leaman. Barr followed Leaman to Providence College in 2011 and Bennett became the Union head coach.

Bennett served as head coach at Union until his resignation in 2022 after an allegation and subsequent investigation regarding his coaching style and practices. He served as an assistant coach at Quinnipiac University last season after coaching the Savannah Ghost Pirates in the ECHL, a professional developmental league for the AHL and NHL.

He joins a UMaine program that went 24-8-6 last season, the program’s best record since the 2003-04 campaign. The Black Bears finished in the top 10 of both major national hockey polls.

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College Sports

Auburn will not match Alabama Football recruiting but Hugh Freeze may be right

Published

56 minutes ago

July 10, 2025

Your Sports Nation

Alabama football fans have had recent fun bashing Hugh Freeze and Auburn Athletic Director John Cohen. The pair claimed that after Aug. 1, Auburn’s recruiting success will blossom as many current commits flip from other schools. The flips will be the result of recruits learning from written offers that promised dollars may not be real. Freeze stated, “We’ve got great interpretations from our administration and our legal team on what the (House) settlement really means and how we should operate, and that’s what we’re doing. And if others are operating in a manner not with that, I’m hopeful that they’ll be called out on that at some point.”

Alabama fans have good reason to scoff. Freeze and Auburn have a considerable history of rule-breaking. Auburn may have hit the brakes on college football’s spending spree because the school’s resources have been depleted. That doesn’t mean that Freeze’s and Cohen’s comments were wrong.

Freeze and Cohen are right to suggest there should be a reckoning across college football’s biggest spenders. Still, expecting clarity to happen quickly or smoothly is unrealistic. During Big 12 Media Days, multiple coaches mentioned general confusion about player compensation and the struggles of the College Sports Commission to enact enforcement measures and approve NIL deals.

Yahoo’s Ross Dellenger began the title of a recent story with “We don’t know the rules”. Dellenger was expounding on what he had heard from Big 12 coaches. Check out some comments below.

“We don’t know the rules. The settlement passed, but who knows what Deloitte is going to clear. Until there is clarity, you’re living in limbo.”

“You are seeing a lot of people lie and promise fake things.”

After talking to multiple coaches, Dellenger concluded, “Schools are making big enough contract offers to recruits that they cannot possibly remain under college football’s new compensation cap, some coaches believe. Others are guaranteeing third-party NIL deals as part of the total compensation package to athletes, something against new revenue-share rules. A few are doling out cash from their collectives to high school players in an attempt to induce their commitment, also against new rules.”

Lawyers and conference administrators are working to codify the new enforcement process. Understandably, the effort is progressing slowly. The NIL Go Clearinghouse is also lagging in approving submitted deals, with a reported 60-plus percent of deals in limbo.

Alabama Football’s Kalen DeBoer has been quiet, but other SEC coaches have not

Hugh Freeze has not been the only SEC football coach to be vocal about the problems. As reported by Dellenger, Kirby Smart stated, “Some school-affiliated booster collectives are currently compensating high school players — upward of $20,000 a month — to remain committed and eventually sign with their school.” Additionally, most NIL deals promised to recruits and transfers have not been approved by the clearinghouse.

Quick clarity on new rules, enforcement, and penalties was a pipe dream. It was always going to be a muddled situation that would take at least months to resolve. While Auburn will not suddenly zoom up recruiting rankings in August, Alabama football fans might once want to cut Freeze some slack. He was not wrong in claiming that programs are gaming the new system.

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College Sports

What did you do this summer? One of our AMCATS won silver with Team Canada

This summer Anna Maria College Men’s Ice Hockey goalie Matthew Hennessey represented Team Canada in the 2025 ISBHF U23 Ball Hockey World Championships in Hradec Kralove, Czechia. Hennessey tended the net in four games for Canada, helping the team win Silver in the Championship game against Czechia. While in net, Hennessey made 80 saves with an 89.89 […]

Published

58 minutes ago

July 10, 2025

Your Sports Nation

This summer Anna Maria College Men’s Ice Hockey goalie Matthew Hennessey represented Team Canada in the 2025 ISBHF U23 Ball Hockey World Championships in Hradec Kralove, Czechia.

Hennessey tended the net in four games for Canada, helping the team win Silver in the Championship game against Czechia. While in net, Hennessey made 80 saves with an 89.89 SV% and a 3.03 GAA earning himself Best Goalie of the tournament.

Matthew will be returning to Paxton this fall for his third season with the AMCATS after helping the team reach their most successful season in program history.

College Sports

BYU Freshman AJ Dybantsa Partners With Fanatics for Reported 8-Figure NIL Deal

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! What is life like being a multimillionaire college athlete before ever stepping foot on the gridiron or basketball court? Just ask AJ Dybantsa, the top-ranked prospect in the nation who is set to suit up for the BYU Cougars this upcoming college basketball season. The 6-foot-9, 200-pound […]

Published

1 hour ago

July 10, 2025

Your Sports Nation

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

What is life like being a multimillionaire college athlete before ever stepping foot on the gridiron or basketball court?

Just ask AJ Dybantsa, the top-ranked prospect in the nation who is set to suit up for the BYU Cougars this upcoming college basketball season. The 6-foot-9, 200-pound forward out of Brocktown, Massachusetts, has burst onto the scene as one of the most heralded prospects in recent memory. Multiple recruiting outlets rank him as the No. 1 recruit in the 2025 class, and he is widely projected to be the top overall pick in next year’s NBA Draft.

But before he suits up for the Cougars this year, Dybantsa has been busy in the always-evolving NIL space, agreeing to multiple brand partnerships and carrying an NIL valuation of more than $4 million, per On3.

Dybantsa made another big splash this past week, signing a multi-year deal with Fanatics Collectibles, one of the company’s most significant NIL partnership deals to date. Fanatics has exclusive collectible partnerships with multiple athletes and welcomed Dybantsa as its newest ambassador in a video clip released on Wednesday.

The agreement with Fanatics’ memorabilia arm is worth eight figures, according to a source familiar with the deal. The exclusive partnership will be centered around trading cards and memorabilia, including autographs, game-used jerseys, inscriptions and Dybantsa’s inclusion in Fanatics brand marketing campaigns.

According to Fanatics collectibles, Dybantsa will be featured in a number of upcoming products, among them Bowman U NOW – a program that celebrates moments in collegiate sports – and other Bowman offerings.

Dybantsa was already part of Fanatics Collectibles’ McDonald’s All-American Game deal and has reported NIL partnerships with the likes of Red Bull and Nike.

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College Sports

TSU Hockey Delayed: Financial crisis stalls program start

Everyone involved believes that it will be worth the wait for Tennessee State University to become the first historically Black college and university (HBCU) to have a hockey program. But wait, they must. The school announced Thursday that the program will not begin play this season as planned. Instead, the launch has been delayed until […]

Published

1 hour ago

July 10, 2025

Your Sports Nation

Everyone involved believes that it will be worth the wait for Tennessee State University to become the first historically Black college and university (HBCU) to have a hockey program.

But wait, they must.

The school announced Thursday that the program will not begin play this season as planned. Instead, the launch has been delayed until the 2026-27 season due to issues related to the financial crisis that stemmed from the state underfunding the university by at least $544 million over 50 years. Staff members had focused on fundraising in recent months even as they recruited players and worked to build a schedule, all while tackling the myriad other logistics required to get an athletics program up and running. Ultimately, time ran out.

“Deferring the inaugural season … is the right step to build a foundation worthy of the university,” Kevin Westgarth, the National Hockey League’s VP of Hockey Development and Strategic Collaboration, said in a release. “TSU has faced challenges before and always met them and come back stronger, and we expect hockey to be the latest chapter of that story.”

TSU announced in June 2023 that it would create an ice hockey program and planned to begin play as a Division I team this fall. The NHL and its local franchise, the Nashville Predators, backed the effort, which is seen as an important step in broadening the appeal of the sport. The NHL has provided funding and resources through its Industry Growth Fund. College Hockey, Inc. also offered support and input to ensure all the necessary steps were taken to create a successful and enduring program.

In recent months, however, TSU’s financial issues impacted every aspect of the university community. It was determined the hockey program would need to be self-funded, meaning a budgetary goal of $5 million needed for the first two seasons would have to be met without support from the university.

“Working closely with the NHL and the Predators, we agree that an additional year will provide the program with the time and resources it needs to launch at full strength and with long-term financial success in mind,” TSU Interim President Dwayne Tucker said.

Coach Duanté Abercrombie, hired in April 2024, has directed the fundraising effort. In the short term, the focus now will be on community engagement, initiatives to increase donations and continued program development (recruiting, facility planning, staff development, etc.) in an effort to maintain the excitement for and enthusiasm about a program that seeks to be a catalyst for other HBCU institutions to do the same.

“College Hockey, Inc. remains fully supportive of Tennessee State’s commitment to adding men’s ice hockey to its athletics program,” Sean Hogan, Executive Director of College Hockey, Inc., said. “We’re excited to work closely with TSU as it prepares to launch and to see the impact this historic initiative will have on both the university and the growth of college hockey.”

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