What is the best solution for the California schools who are now in the Big Ten? Should there be a separate conference for some of the other sports? — @AdrianWRodgers
The best solution for the California schools in the Big Ten (USC and UCLA) is the same as the best solution for the California schools in the ACC (Stanford and Cal): At the earliest possible point — and that’s probably the end of the decade — pull their Olympic sports out of the new conferences and create a regional league.
That could be the Pac-12 3.0, a revamped version of the conference that will arise in the summer of 2026.
It could be an enlarged edition of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, which has existed for years and already includes USC water polo and Stanford beach volleyball, Cal rowing and many other sports teams.
Or it could be a new conference, crafted specifically to meet the competitive and financial demands of the next version of college sports.
Football is different and should be treated as such. Whether the L.A. schools remain in the Big Ten and the Bay Area schools remain in the ACC as football members through the 2030s, we cannot say definitively. The potential for a super league looms over the sport and will have immense consequences.
The same might be true of men’s and women’s basketball — the next move for those sports might be to remain where they are.
But for the dozens of Olympic sports teams at the four California schools, the best option is crystal clear: Return to regional competition, the sooner the better.
Will basketball-only schools (like Gonzaga or those in the Big East) thrive in the future college sports economic environment since they don’t have football sucking up a vast majority of the athletic finances and NIL resources? — @Wazzucoug1996
Great topic and great question, and you’re spot on: There’s a strong case to be made that schools with high-level basketball programs and no football will have an advantage in the next era.
The math itself illustrates why.
Let’s use Gonzaga and Washington as examples (and to be clear, this is merely our view of the finances in Spokane and Seattle):
— There’s a $20.5 million revenue-sharing cap under the terms of the House vs NCAA settlement. Like all Power Four schools, the Huskies are likely to distribute that cash in approximately the following manner: $15 million to the football roster; $3 million to the men’s basketball roster; and $2.5 million to all other sports.
— Gonzaga doesn’t have the wherewithal to share $20.5 million and won’t come close. Which is fine, because the Zags don’t have a football roster to fund. They can allocate as much as they want across the university’s sports teams, using revenue streams and cost cutting to create a pool of cash for the athletes.
Maybe the Zags spend as much on their basketball roster as the Huskies.
Maybe they share more — maybe they share $5 million, not $3 million.
That $2 million difference in total allotment would have a greater impact in basketball than football because it only takes one elite player to alter your fortunes.
We suspect the Big Ten and SEC will find ways to offset any revenue-sharing disadvantage they might encounter with the likes of Gonzaga, Villanova and UConn. But schools in the ACC and Big 12 don’t have as much room to maneuver.
It will be fascinating to watch that dynamic play out.
Regarding the new Big Ten members, what percentage of teams use chartered flights compared to flying commercial? — @coleltaylor
We don’t have a detailed breakdown across the dozens of teams from the four schools. But suffice it to say that football and basketball use chartered flights while many of the other sports — the traditional Olympic sports — do not.
It depends on the school and, to some degree, the circumstances of a particular road trip.
As noted above: The situation must change at the first possible opportunity, which probably arises in 2028-29 when the Big Ten renegotiates its media rights deal and can address membership issues.
Considering that the College Football Playoff selection committee did a bad job of implementing common sense strength-of-schedule devices, shouldn’t they do a blind selection process? What kind of basketball analytics are models for the football playoff? — @mlondo856
We wondered that, as well, and pursued the issue with two of the smartest minds on college basketball: Ken Pomeroy, author of the groundbreaking analytics website KenPom.com, and Kevin Pauga, whose KPI (Kevin Pauga Index) is used by the NCAA selection committee.
Our article was published last week, but here’s a synopsis:
— Yes, the CFP process is flawed, in part because it was designed before conference realignment and therefore cannot properly account for the scheduling misses within each league.
— Another major problem: The lack of clarity into which metrics are being used and how much weight is given to each.
— The basketball analytics don’t translate easily to football because the sample size, in both games and possessions, is so much smaller in football.
It’s more difficult to define success in football.
“There are about 70 to 72 possessions for each team in basketball, and you can measure the outcome of every play: You scored or you stopped a team from scoring,” Pauga said. “If there’s one point awarded per possession (in the computer algorithm), that’s 140 points — that’s real data. And you can adjust based on the location of the game and the quality of the opponent.
“But in football, there are only eight or 10 possessions per game for each team, plus all the plays within each possession. How do you measure (analytically) the yards gained on first down? It’s more difficult to quantify. And are we judging the better team based on total points scored? What if your kicker misses three field goals? Does that mean you are the lesser team?
“The data points are more difficult to compute.”
That said, the CFP selection committee could stand to improve its process.
Do the West Coast universities still have student-athletes? Certainly, students can be employees, but to receive a diploma a student must receive an education that is designed to lead to an academic degree. For students who may regularly be absent from campus for four or five days at a time, how do they get the same instruction as non-athlete students? — Mark M
Major college football is big business, and big business simply doesn’t mesh with the traditional approach to higher education. The sport has attempted to navigate that contradiction for decades, but it has gotten immeasurably more difficult recently with realignment, the transfer portal and NIL payments.
It should be pretty clear where the schools stand. If education was truly paramount, Washington would not be in the Big Ten and Stanford would not be in the ACC.
However, the schools are attempting to make the education piece work in the new world by providing academic support to the athletes on road trips. (They did that in the past. The need is simply greater now.)
If the cross-country travel has a material effect, we’ll know soon enough:
Each spring, the NCAA releases the Academic Progress Rate (APR) scores for each school. They measure real-time progress and retention.
In the spring of 2026, the APR scores for the 2024-25 academic year will be released.
The best solution for the California schools in the Big Ten (USC and UCLA) is the same as the best solution for the California schools in the ACC (Stanford and Cal): At the earliest possible point — and that’s probably the end of the decade — pull their Olympic sports out of the new conferences and create a regional league.
That could be the Pac-12 3.0, a revamped version of the conference that will arise in the summer of 2026.
It could be an enlarged edition of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, which has existed for years and already includes USC water polo and Stanford beach volleyball, Cal rowing and many other sports teams.
Or it could be a new conference, crafted specifically to meet the competitive and financial demands of the next version of college sports.
Football is different and should be treated as such. Whether the L.A. schools remain in the Big Ten and the Bay Area schools remain in the ACC as football members through the 2030s, we cannot say definitively. The potential for a super league looms over the sport and will have immense consequences.
The same might be true of men’s and women’s basketball — the next move for those sports might be to remain where they are.
But for the dozens of Olympic sports teams at the four California schools, the best option is crystal clear: Return to regional competition, the sooner the better.
Will basketball-only schools (like Gonzaga or those in the Big East) thrive in the future college sports economic environment since they don’t have football sucking up a vast majority of the athletic finances and NIL resources? — @Wazzucoug1996
Great topic and great question, and you’re spot on: There’s a strong case to be made that schools with high-level basketball programs and no football will have an advantage in the next era.
The math itself illustrates why.
Let’s use Gonzaga and Washington as examples (and to be clear, this is merely our view of the finances in Spokane and Seattle):
— There’s a $20.5 million revenue-sharing cap under the terms of the House vs NCAA settlement. Like all Power Four schools, the Huskies are likely to distribute that cash in approximately the following manner: $15 million to the football roster; $3 million to the men’s basketball roster; and $2.5 million to all other sports.
— Gonzaga doesn’t have the wherewithal to share $20.5 million and won’t come close. Which is fine, because the Zags don’t have a football roster to fund. They can allocate as much as they want across the university’s sports teams, using revenue streams and cost cutting to create a pool of cash for the athletes.
Maybe the Zags spend as much on their basketball roster as the Huskies.
Maybe they share more — maybe they share $5 million, not $3 million.
That $2 million difference in total allotment would have a greater impact in basketball than football because it only takes one elite player to alter your fortunes.
We suspect the Big Ten and SEC will find ways to offset any revenue-sharing disadvantage they might encounter with the likes of Gonzaga, Villanova and UConn. But schools in the ACC and Big 12 don’t have as much room to maneuver.
It will be fascinating to watch that dynamic play out.
Regarding the new Big Ten members, what percentage of teams use chartered flights compared to flying commercial? — @coleltaylor
We don’t have a detailed breakdown across the dozens of teams from the four schools. But suffice it to say that football and basketball use chartered flights while many of the other sports — the traditional Olympic sports — do not.
It depends on the school and, to some degree, the circumstances of a particular road trip.
As noted above: The situation must change at the first possible opportunity, which probably arises in 2028-29 when the Big Ten renegotiates its media rights deal and can address membership issues.
Considering that the College Football Playoff selection committee did a bad job of implementing common sense strength-of-schedule devices, shouldn’t they do a blind selection process? What kind of basketball analytics are models for the football playoff? — @mlondo856
We wondered that, as well, and pursued the issue with two of the smartest minds on college basketball: Ken Pomeroy, author of the groundbreaking analytics website KenPom.com, and Kevin Pauga, whose KPI (Kevin Pauga Index) is used by the NCAA selection committee.
Our article was published last week, but here’s a synopsis:
— Yes, the CFP process is flawed, in part because it was designed before conference realignment and therefore cannot properly account for the scheduling misses within each league.
— Another major problem: The lack of clarity into which metrics are being used and how much weight is given to each.
— The basketball analytics don’t translate easily to football because the sample size, in both games and possessions, is so much smaller in football.
It’s more difficult to define success in football.
“There are about 70 to 72 possessions for each team in basketball, and you can measure the outcome of every play: You scored or you stopped a team from scoring,” Pauga said. “If there’s one point awarded per possession (in the computer algorithm), that’s 140 points — that’s real data. And you can adjust based on the location of the game and the quality of the opponent.
“But in football, there are only eight or 10 possessions per game for each team, plus all the plays within each possession. How do you measure (analytically) the yards gained on first down? It’s more difficult to quantify. And are we judging the better team based on total points scored? What if your kicker misses three field goals? Does that mean you are the lesser team?
“The data points are more difficult to compute.”
That said, the CFP selection committee could stand to improve its process.
Do the West Coast universities still have student-athletes? Certainly, students can be employees, but to receive a diploma a student must receive an education that is designed to lead to an academic degree. For students who may regularly be absent from campus for four or five days at a time, how do they get the same instruction as non-athlete students? — Mark M
Major college football is big business, and big business simply doesn’t mesh with the traditional approach to higher education. The sport has attempted to navigate that contradiction for decades, but it has gotten immeasurably more difficult recently with realignment, the transfer portal and NIL payments.
It should be pretty clear where the schools stand. If education was truly paramount, Washington would not be in the Big Ten and Stanford would not be in the ACC.
However, the schools are attempting to make the education piece work in the new world by providing academic support to the athletes on road trips. (They did that in the past. The need is simply greater now.)
If the cross-country travel has a material effect, we’ll know soon enough:
Each spring, the NCAA releases the Academic Progress Rate (APR) scores for each school. They measure real-time progress and retention.
In the spring of 2026, the APR scores for the 2024-25 academic year will be released.
