Were Washington Huskies right to keep Demond Williams Jr.? | Mailbag

The Hotline mailbag publishes weekly. Please send questions to wilnerhotline@bayareanewsgroup.com.

What should Washington have done about the Demond Williams situation last winter? Let him walk? Or keep a guy that doesn’t want to be there? Would Sam Levitt have considered UW if Williams had gone to LSU? — @dukestainer

To address the second question first: The Hotline has not confirmed that LSU was the only school interested in Williams.

In fact, we suspect there was a very real chance he would have landed in Miami, not Baton Rouge. (Would Duke quarterback Darian Mensah, who’s now at Miami, have been a candidate for the Huskies in that situation? Who knows.)

Clearly, Washington’s response to Williams announcing he intended to enter the transfer portal after agreeing to a $4 million NIL contract (approximately) is a worthy issue to ponder given his substandard performance.

Was he all-in with the offseason program? How is the chemistry with his teammates? Are there trust issues with the coaching staff?

We don’t have the answers. But the Hotline was never convinced that Williams, coach Jedd Fisch and the program could churn forward as if nothing happened.

Only in the crucible of the season would reality emerge.

In hindsight, it’s easy to conclude the Huskies should have bid Williams goodbye. (Some believed that was the right move at the time.) Of all the positions, quarterback requires the greatest commitment.

The timing played a vital role. Williams went public with his plans on Jan. 6. Many portal quarterbacks were spoken for by then. Fisch was concerned about UW’s ability to find a capable replacement.

Was that an overreaction? Yep. Losing Williams would not have cratered the 2026 season. There were impact players available.

For example: Mercer’s Braden Atkinson, who looks pretty good this fall in an Oregon State uniform.

In a couple years, when the 24-team playoff is proven to dramatically decrease interest in the regular season, is there any chance the playoff could be cut back to 12 or 16? — @troyboy8ball

College Football Playoff expansion is not official. Not yet. ESPN reported on Thursday that ESPN is close to securing a deal for the 24-team field, and you would think ESPN’s reporting about ESPN would be accurate.

Especially because ESPN is the exclusive rights-holder to the current format and, in our view, is better positioned financially to meet the CFP’s financial demands than other media companies.

(The network is plowing at least $150 million into the conference championship games, which will be eliminated with a 24-team playoff. Move that pot over, add another $150 million or so and — presto! — the required funds are in place.)

That said, if negotiations with ESPN break down, the CFP will simply take the additional games to the open market. The 24-team field is coming, and it’s coming next season.

Any adverse impacts are mere irritations to the commissioners, who are responding to expansion pleas from campus officials who, in turn, are responding to the complaints from donors. And why are donors complaining? Because they are plowing tens of millions per year into player salaries and want a return on their investment.

The desire to mollify frustrated donors, and keep their dollars flowing, is a driving force behind playoff expansion — perhaps the driving force.

What if the move to 24 backfires?

We have written repeatedly, both here and on social media, that there is no going back. Once you expand, it’s over. There’s no going back. The boats are burned. The cables are cut.

But that piece is typically lost in the broader discussion of expansion pros and cons. They are taking a momentous leap to 24 after just two years of 12 … and with no hard data to show 24 is better. It’s insanity.

It’s college sports.

Now, let’s pause briefly to remind readers of the college sports industry’s enduring top-four seeds, because they are all applicable to the playoff expansion discussion:

1. Billable hours (forever undefeated)
2. Unintended consequences (ignored but inevitable)
3. Uncontrolled expenses (the revenue is fine)
4. Lack of accountability (decision-makers are long gone before their bills come due)

Our hunch: The unintended consequences of playoff expansion will take a few years to become obvious to the folks on the front lines of college sports. That’s usually the case. They are so deep in the weeds, they don’t know if it’s day or night.

But we can offer three potential consequences the conference commissioners, university presidents, athletic directors and football coaches are either overlooking or ignoring:

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— Job security. Coaches favor the 24-team field because it widens the path into the playoff, and playoff participation often leads to contract extensions. But will that be the reality? It’s easy to envision a high-priced Big Ten or SEC team earning the No. 11 seed and losing to a No. 22 seed from the ACC or Big 12 in the opening round, with outrage following. Within two years, participation won’t be enough. Winning a game in the 24-team era will be the equivalent of making the field in the 12-team era.

— As mentioned above, the desire to reward donors is driving presidents and athletic directors to support playoff expansion. But we ask the same question here as with the coaches: With a playoff field featuring 9-3 and 8-4 teams, is mere participation enough? If Donor X writes a check for $5 million and the return is a 9-3 record, No. 19 seed and opening-round loss, will he/she be any less frustrated than is the case now with teams that finish 9-3 and don’t make the 12-team event?

— Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti is the prime architect of the 24-team field. He believes expansion will incentivize schools to play marquee nonconference games because they won’t fret over the extra loss. We’ll believe it when we see it. In our view, coaches and athletic directors will use the following math: three nonconference wins plus a 6-3 record in league play equals a 9-3 overall mark — playoffs, here we come! Coaches never take the harder road. We hope Petitti is right but believe him to be absolutely dead wrong. And the consequences would be immense: Bad nonconference schedules and a lower threshold for playoff inclusion, all of which undermines the drama of the cherished regular season.

All this will take time to play out, of course. But college sports executives have a long and sordid history of not grasping the consequences of their decisions.

And then fleeing before the bill comes due.

How much revenue is Pac-12 Enterprises expected to distribute to the Pac-12 members? It seems like they are producing a large number of games for other conferences as well as Pac-12 teams. — @scorobe1

Honestly, you have a better chance to steal the nuclear codes. The conference has zero interest in revealing the finances underpinning Pac-12 Enterprises.

Based on financial records the conference is required to disclose, we know the Enterprises unit generated $4.4 million in revenue in the 2024-25 fiscal year, the first with just Washington State and Oregon State as members. But that’s not the profit. That’s not the campus distributions.

We should get a morsel of clarity in the spring of 2028, when tax filings for the 2026-27 fiscal year become available.

The specific dollar amount generated by Enterprises and distributed to each school might not be listed, but we’ll get a sense for the total revenue.

Based on conversations with industry sources over the years, the Hotline typically pegs the revenue from third-party production at anywhere from $10,000 to $25,000 per event. To be clear, that’s for a one-off project, like Enterprises producing a Golden State Warriors exhibition game for NBC Sports Bay Area.

The contracts with The CW and USA Network are likely quite different.

If Enterprises ever reaches the point that it’s spinning off a few million dollars annually to each campus, it should be considered a raging success — unlike, for example, the Pac-12 Networks.