Mailbag: Tracing the breadcrumbs to realignment (and a super league) as the CSC struggles for traction and frustration soars
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 you missed it, last week’s mailbag examined how Washington’s hard line with Demond Williams and the Big Ten’s revenue-sharing contract saved the system from collapse.
When realignment is done, which conferences and schools will be left standing? I think the current Power Four includes 67 schools, plus Notre Dame. At least one third of them can’t realistically expect to be in the College Football Playoff on anything like a regular basis. Will they survive? — E Thompson
Goodness, this topic is layered, fascinating and unknowable — all in equal amounts. So we suggest getting comfortable, because we have plenty to say.
Before identifying the survivors, we need to determine the timing of the next realignment wave and the structure that will emerge.
On the former, the Hotline views the 2029-32 window as the likely rupture point due to the expiration dates of the media rights contracts that are holding the whole shebang in place: The Big Ten (2030), Big 12 (2031), CFP (2032), NCAA Tournament (2032) and SEC (2034), plus the steep reduction in the ACC exit fees starting in 2030.
That combination of terminating deals will allow all the major parties, which include the schools, conferences and media partners, the freedom to either prolong the existing structure or design something new.
To some extent, it’s impossible to predict the endgame. So much depends on forces outside the control of the university presidents and conference commissioners — specifically, any changes in the media ecosystem and economic foundation of college sports. If athletes are deemed employees and collective bargaining takes place, for instance, the future could look very different than if athletes continue to be deemed college students.
That said, the Hotline is constantly looking for breadcrumbs to follow — if our little operation could survive simply by reporting on realignment 24/7, we would eagerly shift to that coverage model — and two have appeared recently.
They were easy to miss with all the surface-level news (playoff games, transfer portal movement, coaching changes, etc.), and they certainly could prove false leads. But we made note of both:
1. Michigan named Kent Syverud as the president-elect earlier this week.
Syverud is a Michigan alumnus and the current Syracuse president, but there’s something else notable: He has been a strong proponent of the super league concept.
In fact, Syverud was a member of College Sports Tomorrow, the collection of industry observers and insiders who proposed a detailed super league model to conferences and schools back in 2024. The group has since scattered to the winds, but Syverud is on-the-record stating, “The current model for governing and managing college athletics is dead.”
That worldview was notable at the time but carries vastly more significance when it comes from Michigan’s president — and when cast against the Big Ten’s recent push for a $2 billion infusion of private capital.
As many fans are undoubtedly aware, commissioner Tony Petitti’s proposal required all Big Ten schools to lock in their grant-of-rights for 20 years, a move that would have prevented the blue bloods from joining a super league in the 2030s. (Michigan and USC stood in opposition, derailing the deal.)
We won’t begin to guess how Syverud views the Big Ten’s proposal: Yes, the College Sports Tomorrow idea included private equity as the funding source, so he has clearly considered outside capital; but a 20-year grant-of-rights agreement would prevent the Wolverines from going anywhere until the mid 2040s.
Either way, one of the most powerful schools in major college football will be led by a super-league proponent.
2. The College Sports Commission (CSC) is not working.
You might remember the CSC. It was created in the aftermath of the House v NCAA lawsuit and charged with providing oversight for revenue sharing and NIL deals.
Of course, the success of the CSC as a regulatory body depends entirely on the degree to which the schools abide by its enforcement decisions. In that regard, the power conference commissioners expected their members to sign a document pledging allegiance to the CSC and agreeing to not file lawsuits following undesirable outcomes.
But to date, schools have been reluctant to sign the participation agreement. That’s a problem, because it requires full participation in order to take effect.
The CSC’s oversight authority is important enough that presidents from Arizona, Washington, Georgia and Virginia Tech recently co-authored a statement to their colleagues, urging participation: “Stability is not created by new rules alone, but by a willingness to live by them.”
But many demoralized campus officials across the power conferences believe the only way to secure buy-in from all 68 schools is to weaken the agreement to the point that it’s meaningless. Without enforceable oversight of revenue sharing and NIL deals, all that remains is complete anarchy.
And complete anarchy is, in our view, kindling for a super league.
As Georgia president Jere Morehead told Yahoo: “If the CSC is not going to enforce the House settlement, if the NCAA is not going to enforce tampering rules and if Congress is not going to pass the SCORE Act, then it leaves the SEC in a position that we have to go our own way to create some rules and a level of responsibility.”
To be clear, Morehead wasn’t calling for immediate SEC succession. But the closer conferences get to acting independently from the NCAA, especially the SEC and Big Ten, the more they begin to take on the pillars of a super league with self-contained rulebooks, schedules, governance structures and calendars.
Put another way: The anarchy becomes an accelerant for like-minded, comparably-resourced, deeply-frustrated football blue bloods to untether themselves from the fragile alignment that currently exists across the sport.
The timing doesn’t change. Big Ten schools have a media rights deal until 2030; SEC schools, until 2034. Nothing will happen in the next few years. But if you’re a super league proponent, chaos and frustration are your friends, and recent developments should be viewed favorably.
Now, having spent so much time tracking the breadcrumbs, the Hotline owes the question itself a few words — with a promise of much more to come in future editions of the weekly mailbag.
Details of the super league are easy to sketch, because the entity will be limited in membership to the top 32 or 48 football schools (as defined by success and media value). Why? Because whichever networks agree to broadcast deals with the super league won’t pay substantially more for the rights to air NC State against Mississippi State. The big dollars are rooted in major matchups: Texas vs. Penn State or Florida State vs. USC.
It’s easy to identify 20 or 24 schools that clear the bar. The next tier is a tad murky and could very well depend on competitive success over the rest of the decade, which is why so many schools are firing coaches and building NIL war-chests — everyone wants to be included in the next iteration of the sport.
That goes for realignment, as well.
If the super league doesn’t materialize, then we should expect conference restructuring with the Big Ten and SEC growing their memberships to 22 or 24 schools. Only the most successful and valuable football programs in the Big 12 and ACC will receive invitations. For the likes of Boston College and UCF, Baylor and Virginia Tech — and another 12-18 schools in those leagues — there is good reason for serious concern.
(Washington State and Oregon State, the duo left behind by the Pac-12’s demise, will have company. It’s inevitable.)
Absent a super league, we have long thought the next version of the FBS would feature 48 teams (approximately) in the Big Ten and SEC and another 20-24 in the Big 12, which would effectively become a receptacle for schools excluded from the Big Two.
Everyone else would form a third tier that has more in common with the FCS than the engorged Big Ten and SEC.
But again, so much hinges on athlete employment status and collective bargaining, which are largely unknowable at this point but could gain clarity in the next 12-to-18 months.
Nothing will happen quickly, save for more breadcrumbs being dropped.
Could we see a school go all the way in buying itself out of a grant-of-rights deal to get into a Power Two conference, (ex.: Texas Tech buying into the SEC)? We saw Memphis, backed by FedEx money, unsuccessfully buy into the Big 12. Could more money on the table bring success? — Will D
Memphis tried to buy into the Big 12 last year with roughly $200 million in sponsorship commitments. Thankfully, the conference rejected the offer, but we have no doubt that similar tactics will be deployed again as the close of the decade approaches and schools in the ACC, Big 12 and Group of Six becoming increasingly desperate to gain entry into the Big Ten or SEC.
Realignment decisions based on partial revenue shares have been fairly common this decade. BYU, Cincinnati, UCF and Houston joined the Big 12 in 2022 as partial members. Oregon and Washington did the same a year later with the Big Ten and Stanford and Cal in the ACC.
But SMU went next level when it agreed to join the ACC with zero Tier 1 media rights revenue for nine years. It was tantamount to buying your way into a conference and created a permission structure for schools like Memphis to get creative with the financial terms of their deals.
That said, existing conference members and their media partners must see value in the expansion process.
Therein lies the mitigating factor. Realignment is more than a fistful of cash. Conferences must believe new members create value financially and competitively, that they won’t detract from the existing institutional alignment, that they make sense geo — eh, never mind. (Geography is clearly not a consideration for most conferences.)
The schools with the deepest pockets (i.e., richest donor base) are the most likely to attempt to buy membership. Texas Tech comes to mind, of course. Same with BYU. But because so many other factors are at play, success seems unlikely in the next few years.
You are attending an event as a sports fan and see NCAA president Charlie Baker. You have a chance to ask him one question. What is the question? Would your question be the same as if you were asking for the Wilner Hotline? — @jimmy0726
Hmmmm. I’m not sure it’s possible to separate the two, because I have viewed NCAA matters through the lens of a journalist for my entire adult life.
And honestly, the topic that would most interest me as a fan should be the same topic that most interests me as a journalist, because it’s the topic that matters more than any other: athlete employment.
None of the current chaos will settle into a viable long-haul framework without resolution on the employment issue. College football and basketball desperately need collectively bargained rules and regulations similar to those in the NFL and NBA.
But that momentous step requires athletes to be represented by unions.
And for unions to form, according to the legal analysts we have spoken to, some version of employment is required.
Does Baker foresee the schools shifting to an employment model in the next few years?
What steps are necessary for that endgame to become reality?
And now that Congress has failed to move forward with the SCORE Act, which would have prohibited employment, does Baker see any alternative (beyond collective bargaining) that would both lend sanity to the system and withstand legal challenges?
That’s a tad more in the weeds than asking Baker where he spent vacation, or which Netflix series he enjoys. But if you’re a college sports fan, it’s the issue at the core of everything.
Might you have a percentage in mind of current football players in the portal who won’t find new homes due to various reasons? How good is the information these kids are getting from their agents? — @MrEd315
We just witnessed an instance of terrible information play out in Seattle, where quarterback Demond Williams and his family circumvented agent Doug Hendrickson, of Wasserman Sports, to seek the best deal they could find.
Of course, they did this after Williams signed a binding revenue-sharing agreement with UW. It was bad advice on more fronts than we can count.
Unfortunately, Williams isn’t alone. The unregulated agent/advisor market in college sports leaves many athletes vulnerable to bad operators.
(In some situations, the personal and financial circumstances are such that the victims warrant a dose of sympathy. In other cases, the athletes and their inner circles should know better and deserve what they get.)
The portal closed Friday morning, with two exceptions: The Indiana and Miami players have a brief window after the championship game.
All in all, close to 7,000 players across the FBS and FCS entered the portal from Jan. 2-16. Most have found homes. But according to ESPN, approximately 1,200 remain unsigned. How many will be left in limbo? How many will seek roster spots in the FCS?
Too many, unfortunately.
We still don’t have a Big Ten football schedule for 2026. (Didn’t it come out in December last year?). Is the only holdup because USC dodged Notre Dame and still needs a team to fill its schedule? — @fludrick
Yes, the Big Ten’s schedule for 2025 was announced in December of the prior year, and we initially expected the conference to work on a comparable timeline for the 2026 edition.
USC’s situation is a complication, for sure. The Trojans have a non-conference vacancy that, hopefully, will be filled by a familiar opponent: Stanford.
(The Trojans-Cardinal rivalry dates to 1905 and is an important game for college football on the West Coast — far more important, in our view, than Stanford’s series with Notre Dame.)
The Big Ten could be waiting on USC, which is waiting on Stanford, which is working to create an opening.
Our hunch is the schedule will be released late next week or the following week, but that timeline hasn’t been officially confirmed by the conference.
On another matter, we are fairly certain: The USC-Notre Dame situation wasn’t the sole reason for the delay into 2026.
The Big Ten had other issues to solve. Scheduling nine games across 10 or 11 weeks for 18 schools — and each campus has specific requests and restrictions — is deeply complicated.
How come Oregon State’s Scott Barnes continues to have a job after being the highest-paid athletic director in the new Pac-12 and promising alumni, fans and donors that he would have the highest-paid coaching staff for football? The budget isn’t a satisfactory answer. — @MauiTrailBlazin
No doubt, it has been a difficult stretch for Barnes. He botched the football hire with Trent Bray, which set the program back at least two years, in our estimation.
The Beavers then hired another rookie coach, JaMarcus Shephard, and reportedly won’t make good on Barnes’ boasts about staff compensation.
(Don’t bother asking about men’s basketball or the NIL management deal with Blueprint Sports.)
All in all, OSU fans have every right to be frustrated with Barnes. But they should be more upset with university president Jayathi Murthy, who is Barnes’ boss and responsible for the internal funding of athletics.
Success or failure of athletic departments begins at the top of the university org chart. Best we can tell, Murthy is content with a status quo that is correctly viewed as untenable by OSU’s most passionate fans.
If the Beavers aren’t immediately competitive in the rebuilt Pac-12, they will sink into a hole from which there is no escape, save for a tunnel that leads into the FCS.
Those paying close attention might notice a very different vibe emanating from OSU’s partner in Pac-12 survival, Washington State, where a new president, Elizabeth Cantwell, has made it quite clear she wants to win.
Based on the resource allocation and institutional commitment in recent months, the Hotline would not be surprised if the Cougars leave the Beavers in the dust in coming years.
Of the eight teams left in the NFL playoffs, which starting quarterback would you describe as a game manager? — @cool_breeze
They are all game managers. That is the primary responsibility for every starting quarterback. Instead, we view the situation through the trucks-and-trailers framework described by NFL scouts and analysts: Does the quarterback pull the offense, or is he pulled by the offense?
Of the eight, one looks more like a trailer than the others: Denver’s Bo Nix, who has a touchdown-to-interception ratio (25 and 11) of just over 2-to-1 and, crucially, averages just 6.4 yards-per-attempt.
Chicago’s Caleb Williams averages 6.9 ypa, while the other six starters are over 7.0.
Then again, it makes zero difference if your quarterback is a truck or a trailer as long as he’s the last one standing.
How could AI really assist in sports journalism? — @cool_brezze
We have a slightly skeptical view of artificial intelligence generally. On matters involving health care, it could very well be transformative. (It already is, in some respects.) But elsewhere, the long-term impact of AI on society seems uncertain.
Within sports journalism specifically, AI could be incredibly useful in analyzing large amounts of data — with injuries, for example, and concussions in particular.
But in terms of generative AI being used to create news articles, well, that should be worrisome for journalists and concerning for readers alike.
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