Hotline forecast: Our predictions for the Pac-12 (on and off the field) for the 2022-23 sports season

The conclusion of the NCAA Tournament marks the end of the competition year for college football and basketball. For our purposes, that makes today the first day of the next sports cycle.

The following Hotline predictions for the Pac-12 in 2022-23 are in roughly chronological order.

1. USC won’t claim a trophy in Year One under Lincoln Riley.

The most significant head coaching hire in the Pac-12 in decades and subsequent success in the transfer portal have ratcheted up expectations to an unrealistic level. USC isn’t stout enough on the lines of scrimmage or talented across the secondary to claim the South title or even win 10 games.

In our opinion, Riley needs two recruiting cycles to elevate his two-deep to the level required for a serious conference championship (and CFP) run. An eight- or nine-win season might be received poorly by some USC fans, but crumbled foundations are not easily rebuilt.

2. Closure will come on the two major NCAA investigations.

The Arizona recruiting scandal that began in September 2017 will conclude without debilitating sanctions for the Wildcats, who no longer employ the coaches involved and have already self-imposed a one-year NCAA Tournament ban. Arizona will be placed on probation and docked scholarships but will avoid sanctions that materially alter the trajectory of the program moving forward. However, former coach Sean Miller will be slapped with a major suspension in the first year of his new gig, at Xavier.

In Tempe, the situation will be dramatically different. We expect the NCAA to hammer Arizona State’s football program with a bowl ban, scholarship reductions and recruiting restrictions — on top of what ASU has already imposed — that will cripple the program for at least two seasons. The penalties will make it impossible to justify retaining coach Herm Edwards and athletic director Ray Anderson and turn ASU football into a pariah.

3. Sports betting will be legalized in California.

We expect the long-awaited legalization of sports wagering to become the law of the land when Golden State voters approve a ballot measure in November.

Which ballot measure? Good question. There will be at least one — it allows in-person wagering at tribal casinos and race tracks — and could be as many as four. Supporters are expected to pour tens of millions of dollars into a PR blitz in the fall to convince voters of the mammoth tax revenue that would result from legalized sports wagering.

Gambling on sports is already legal (to varying degrees) in Arizona, Colorado, Oregon and Washington. Add California, and a tsunami of potential revenue for the Pac-12 will appear on the horizon.

4. Utah will win the Pac-12 football championship but not qualify for the College Football Playoff.

The Utes have all the ingredients necessary for a repeat, and we believe they will collect a decisive victory in The Swamp on Sept. 3. But an early-season show of force at Florida does not a playoff team make.

We prefer to re-engineer the thought process: The question isn’t whether Utah can reach the playoff. It’s whether the Utes are good enough to finish 13-0 or 12-1, because no two-loss team has ever made the CFP and we’re fairly confident the Pac-12 won’t be the conference to change the paradigm. In our opinion, the Utes aren’t quite good enough for 12-1/13-0, not with a schedule that has Florida, San Diego State, nine conference games and a league championship.

5. The Pac-12 Networks will remain in the Bay Area.

Last week, the Pac-12 announced it would dissolve the conference office, implement a fully remote work environment for most employees and move its content production to a location that “has not yet been determined.” The facility will house the Pac-12 Networks sets, production equipment and 50 employees (approximately) needed to generate content for the various distribution platforms.

Las Vegas is an obvious option. Commissioner George Kliavkoff lives in Las Vegas, has contacts throughout the community from his time in charge of MGM Sports and Entertainment and could find a deal on office space. But Kliavkoff also understands the need for expertise. Relocating would result in significant personnel losses and force the Pac-12 to replace the majority of a first-rate production staff.

Instead, we expect the conference to find a small studio in San Bruno, Daly City or Millbrae — somewhere easily accessible from SFO. Even there, the savings on rent would be massive. And the conference wouldn’t have to hire and train a new production staff.

6. The football schedule won’t change.

The Pac-12 is considering a reduction in the number of conference games, from nine to eight. However, that shift depends largely on the Big Ten doing the same, to give Pac-12 teams a high-quality replacement for the lost intra-league game.

To this point, there’s nothing to suggest the Big Ten plans to change — several athletic directors have voiced opposition, in fact. For that reason, we expect the Pac-12 to keep its nine-game rotation at least through the 2025 season. (If the CFP expands in ’26, the conference might re-assess.)

7. NIL will cleave football recruiting.

With each passing month, recruiting success becomes more dependent on endorsement opportunities (through name, image and likeness) that are made available to prospects. The schools with the greatest support from donors and local businesses stand to benefit. Schools that are slow on the uptake will fall behind.

It’s not as simple as the football programs in urban areas having an advantage over those in small towns. Sure, USC is dominating — we expect the Trojans to sign a top-five class in December — but Washington has yet to rise above the pack.

The football programs in greatest jeopardy are those with little community support and indifferent donors and alumni.

8. The Pac-12 will sell its statistical data.

The conference is already preparing to make its data available during the upcoming media rights negotiations, with Pac-12 Networks president Mark Shuken recently telling the Hotline: “We’re trying to get ahead of the future in terms of the fan experience and products and our ability to monetize our data.”

The conference could partner with DraftKings, a media company, a gambling service or a company like Sportradar, which collects data and makes it available to oddsmakers and media companies.

The NBA reportedly signed a multi-year deal with Sportradar for $250 million. Given the volume of data the Pac-12 could provide — and the primacy of football in the sports wagering universe — we believe a data-rights partnership could be worth $50 million annually to the conference.

(Please note: Our prediction assumes the presidents and chancellors eventually approve the endeavor; as of now, they have not.)

9. No Pac-12 team will reach the Final Four.

UCLA is our pick to win the conference title next spring, but the Pac-12 will produce zero men’s Final Four participants for the 12th time in 14 seasons. (Only Oregon ’17 and UCLA ’21 have reached the national semifinals since the late 2000s.)

There is a certain degree of randomness to March Madness — a bad matchup here, a cold-shooting game there, and the season ends in an instant. But it’s extraordinarily difficult to reach the final weekend without stellar guards, and we don’t see any team, with the possible exception of UCLA, possessing enough perimeter playmaking to survive four rounds.

10. The Pac-12 will blow past expectations with its media rights contract.

First, let’s address the timing. The contracts with ESPN and Fox — and the Pac-12 Networks distribution partners — expire in the summer of 2024, which would point to next winter as the start of negotiations for the next contract cycle. However, we believe the process could be expedited.

The networks currently are negotiating with the Big Ten. Once those conclude (in the late spring or early summer), they could quickly pivot to the Pac-12 and wrap everything up by the end of 2022. We wouldn’t bet on that outcome, but it’s possible.

We predict the key pieces for the Pac-12’s next media rights contract will look something like this:

— The terms. Let’s first define the discussion: The annual revenue distributions to each campus — the numbers that get so much media attention — include revenue from March Madness and the College Football Playoff. Our projections are limited to Pac-12 distribution rights for regular-season broadcasts (football and men’s basketball) and the football championship game.

Two factors shape our projections: 1) The sizzling market for live sports (see: the recent NFL and MLB media deals); and 2) the coterminous nature of the Pac-12 rights.

One of the few things former commissioner Larry Scott got right with the media strategy was to ensure that all contracts expired at the same time — in the summer of ’24. That will allow Kliavkoff to saddle to the negotiating table with the football and basketball inventory currently on Fox and ESPN and the 36 football games on the Pac-12 Networks.

With scale comes leverage and flexibility. In our opinion, the Pac-12’s next media rights deal will bring an average annual value of $600 million, which breaks down to $50 million per school over the course of the deal. (The Year One value would be less, assuming an escalator of three or four percent.)

For context, recall that the existing 12-year, $3 billion deal with Fox and ESPN averages $250 million annually ($21 million per school). So yes, we expect the average value to more than double — in part because of market forces, in part because 36 football games will be added to the inventory. (Those games are worth far more to the conference within a package sold to ESPN and Fox than they have been on the Pac-12 Networks.)

The duration of the contract cycle could be eight years, 10 years, perhaps even 12 years — but whatever the length, it will assuredly have an option to reassess midway through.

— The partners. As the current rights-holders, ESPN and Fox have an exclusive negotiating window with the Pac-12. The conference can discuss options with other potential partners, but it cannot engage in formal negotiations with CBS, NBC, Amazon, etc., unless ESPN and Fox are unable (or unwilling) to lock up the Pac-12 during the exclusive window.

We believe they will lock it up, with the end result looking something like this:

* The ‘Game of the Week’ package, featuring late-afternoon kickoffs. Most of these games will be shown over-the-air on FOX and CBS (through a sub-licensing agreement with ESPN and Fox).

* A night-game showcase. The 7 p.m. Pacific window carries significant value for both ESPN and Fox (via FS1), and the networks will move to secure at least one broadcast per week.

* The afternoon array. Most Pac-12 games will be played during daylight and scattered across several networks, from ESPN and ESPN2 to FS1 and perhaps CBS Sports Network. We wouldn’t be surprised if a second sub-licensing deal allows for games on the Turner networks.

* The streaming services. We foresee a handful of games (perhaps one per week) to air on digital platforms like ESPN+ or Paramount+. (There’s no indication Amazon is interested in college football. If it doesn’t want the Big Ten, we can’t envision it nibbling on the Pac-12.)

What about the Pac-12 Networks? The Hotline doesn’t expect them to exist in linear form starting in the summer of 2024; nor do we expect them to show any football or men’s basketball content.

However, as a standalone property, they could serve as a streaming service for Pac-12 Olympic sports. Also, don’t discount the potential for ESPN to buy them as part of the deal that includes football and men’s basketball inventory.

(There are myriad possible outcomes for the Pac-12 Networks and the conference’s media rights in general. This is merely our best guess based on the current landscape. Once the Big Ten negotiations conclude, we’ll have more clarity.)

So there you have it … the Hotline’s projections, on the field and off, for the Pac-12 in the 2022-23 sports cycle.

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