Mailbag: How the NCAA Tournament and College Football Playoff could become two arms of the same corporation in the 2030s

The Hotline mailbag publishes weekly. Please 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 Mount Rushmore of West Coast college basketball teams in the modern era.

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Assuming the NCAA Tournament expands to 76 teams, how do you see the other postseason events responding? The College Basketball Crown already reduced its field from 16 (last year) to eight. Would the NIT also trim its format? — @Seattleite206

Everything about the postseason remains in flux, although clarity should come later this month. Barring an unforeseen development, the NCAA Tournament will expand to 76 teams (men and women) for next season.

There is no competitive reason to grow the event. After all, the first teams left out of the men’s version were 15-loss Oklahoma and 16-loss Auburn.

But the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC want to expand, they are driving the decisions and, if the men’s edition expands, the women’s version will, as well.

Most of the additional teams will come from the power conferences, including the Big East, leaving many quality mid-majors on the outside. Of the 32 participants in the just-completed NIT, for example, 28 were not members of the Power Five.

We don’t see the demand for events vanishing, although yes, the NIT could trim its field to 24 or 16 teams.

The College Basketball Crown featured just eight teams this season, all from the power conferences. It’s jammed into the week between the Elite Eight and Final Four and takes place at a single site (Las Vegas) and, in that regard, is unusual.

But in our view, the Crown is worth watching over the long haul — to a much greater extent than the NIT.

Unlike March Madness and the NIT, which are run by the NCAA itself, the Crown operates outside the NCAA’s jurisdiction. Fox is a co-founder along with the Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG).

Fox also has close ties, through its media rights deals, with the Big East, the Big 12 and the Big Ten.

It’s not difficult to connect the dots.

The power conferences are increasingly frustrated with NCAA policies and revenue distribution models in both football and basketball. That’s not an unreasonable view: They are responsible for a much greater percentage of the revenue than they receive within the heavily subsidized college sports food chain.

But the Big Ten and SEC, in particular, currently have no recourse due to the media rights deals for the College Football Playoff and the NCAA Tournament.

Those contracts not only expire in the 2030s; they expire at the same time: in the spring of 2032.

That coterminous situation creates an opening for the power leagues to completely overhaul the two postseasons starting with the 2032-33 academic year. They could determine the participating conferences, the field sizes and the formats.

They could even create an LLC (or something similar) to operate the football playoff and basketball tournament and sell the media rights together for 18 bajillion dollars.

This is where the Crown, co-owned by Fox, enters the chat.

Even if the event meanders along for five years, the long-haul purpose is clear: leverage.

If the power conferences don’t get the concessions they want from the rest of Division I membership and decide to restructure the postseason, the Crown could easily morph into the vessel of choice.

Fox and its partner, AEG, will have the operational framework in place. The event could have 32, 48, 64 or 76 teams. It could be staged exclusively in Las Vegas or played throughout the country. It could carve out bids for low- and mid-majors or feature only the power conferences.

Thanks to the Crown, the next version of March Madness would have built-in operational expertise (AEG) and a media partner (Fox).

From there, everything would fall into place.

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How much transfer portal madness and mayhem, for men and women, should we expect? — @MrEd315

The portals opened Tuesday, after the NCAA championships — an improvement over the 2024-25 calendars that allowed players to transfer during March Madness.

Approximately 1,000 men’s players were listed within 10 hours of the gates swinging open, according to ESPN.

By Friday, there were more than 2,000 names.

Will the total exceed the mark set last spring (about 2,700)? Perhaps. But be warned: It will take a few weeks for clarity to emerge. Resist the temptation to make snap judgments on specific teams based on the outbound decisions made by one or two players.

The total isn’t quite as high on the women’s side, at least not yet.

But either way, it’s mayhem on the level expected — all of it supported by the legal system.

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Before the Pac-12 broke up, what did the 10 presidents say to Utah and Stanford when they said the conference should ask for $50 million per school (per year) for media rights? — @jimmy0726

Our understanding is the Pac-12 board supported the strategy.

Most university presidents know absolutely nothing about media rights valuations, but Utah’s Taylor Randall has a business background and, according to sources, leaned into a professor on campus to run the numbers. (Presumably, the professor was familiar with media rights.)

What’s more, Stanford’s president at the time, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, was an influential voice on the board because, well, he was Stanford’s president.

That said, responsibility for managing the board of any conference falls to the commissioner, and George Kliavkoff blew it.

Both Kliavkoff and his media advisor, Doug Perlman, knew the $50 million-per-school valuation was outrageous. Heck, it would have been the upper end of the range with USC and UCLA as members, and the L.A. schools were long gone by then. (Without them, the Pac-12’s starting price should have been $40 million.)

But Kliavkoff lacked the clout or willingness to talk the presidents off their position. As a result, the Pac-12’s negotiating stance was hijacked by a subset of presidents living in fantasy land.

As we have written numerous times, the demise of the Pac-12 cannot be blamed on a single decision or situation. It required a series of missteps over many years that had one thing in common: terrible leadership.

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Do you think athletes will have to sign at least a two-year contract to stay with a university in the future in order to slow down this frenzy of transfers? Also, what if an athlete is allowed to transfer once without sitting out? I like it. — @adictdtaquak

To the first part, that is already the case.

Quarterback Darian Mensah reportedly signed a two-year NIL contract with Duke in the 2024-25 offseason worth $4 million annually. He lasted one year, then bolted for Miami.

This point probably isn’t made nearly enough: The NIL deals are not employment contracts because the athletes are not employees. They don’t bind players to schools in the same fashion as coaching contracts.

All the schools can do, frankly, is follow the Big Ten’s lead. The conference constructed an agreement that mandates the player’s NIL remain with the school in the event he/she leaves.

We saw that with Washington quarterback Demond Williams, who would have owed the Huskies millions if he had departed.

Athletes can maximize flexibility if they sign one-year deals. Of course, that approach carries risk for them, as well.

As for the question about limiting athletes to one penalty-free transfer — that’s in President Donald Trump’s executive order, by the way — we don’t see how it withstands a legal challenge.

The courts have already granted players the ability to transfer multiple times without having to sit out. Rolling back established rights seems unlikely.

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How has coverage of college sports improved since realignment? — @jimmy0726

It depends, in part, on how you would define improvement.

Media coverage certainly has changed in the two seasons since the Pac-12 imploded, with more focus on the four remaining power conferences. And of those, the SEC and Big Ten receive an outsized portion of the attention.

In our view, the most significant coverage change is rooted in the off-field news, not the conference restructuring.

College sports is undergoing a version of the awkward teenage years. The eligibility and economic challenges are its version of acne and body odor. Eventually, it will become a mature product, but that process will take years.

The media expertise is largely tied to traditional topics like games, injuries, coaching changes, etc. Legal issues and business development matters (e.g., private equity) are not wheelhouse topics.

As a result, the quality of coverage is evolving, as well.

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How are players in the G League going to college? — @tmmmurph

The situation is confusing, for sure, and the blame for that falls entirely on the NCAA, which assesses eligibility cases individually. But there is one position from which it won’t budge: College players cannot turn pro and then return to college.

That is the difference in the following cases:

— Santa Clara guard Thierry Darlan grew up in the Central African Republic, played in the G League, then joined Santa Clara’s roster for the 2025-26 season.

— Alabama big man Charles Bediako played for Alabama for two seasons, entered the draft, played in the G League, then tried to return to the Crimson Tide this winter.

Despite the apparent similarities, there is one massive difference: Darlan didn’t play in college before the G League; Bediako did. The NCAA fought his return to Alabama and won the case.

We wholeheartedly agree with the NCAA’s position, by the way.

The wall separating NCAA basketball and the NBA or G League must remain standing for the sake of the game. Players cannot be allowed to turn pro and then return — to move back and forth.

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What does the Pac-12 look like five years from now? — SalParadice_

Five years from now is the spring of 2031, which coincides with the end of the Pac-12’s grant-of-rights agreement and media deals with CBS, USA Network and The CW.

By then, we’ll know if the conference has gone extinct or is preparing for a new chapter.

In fact, we should know by late 2029 or 2030 whether the Pac-12 will endure, for the forces shaping its future exist at the highest level of college sports and should be in place by the turn of the decade.

Will the Big Ten and SEC break away? Will a football super league form? Will the Power Four expand again? Will the Olympic sports reorganize on regional lines?

The Pac-12’s future will be a reaction to those events — and the same goes for the ACC and Big 12 and every conference on (or below) the Pac-12’s competitive tier.

Everything hinges on the SEC and Big Ten.

Our view changes frequently. Some weeks, the Hotline is convinced a super league is the only plausible outcome. Other weeks, we see conference expansion as the most likely endgame.

But know this: Every school in the Pac-12 wants to participate in the highest level of whatever comes next.

In that approach, they are not alone.

Nobody wants to get left behind.

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