The Pac-12 Hotline newsletter is published each Monday-Wednesday-Friday during the college sports season (and twice-a-week in the summer). This edition, from July 16, has been made available in archived form.

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Camp Dates

We’re back from vacation — a vacation that was mercifully devoid of major news in the Pac-12, thereby allowing the Hotline to catch up on 50 weeks of lost sleep.

Our preseason coverage will unfold in two phases: For the next month, expect the Hotline to produce content at a steady, not frenetic, pace; once mid-August arrives, we’ll shift to sixth gear.

The preseason begins (unofficially) on July 24 with Pac-12 football media day, followed quickly by the onset of training camps.

The first practice for each team is based on the date of its season opener. Half the conference is in action before the first full Saturday of play.

(Camp dates provided by the conference.)

Camp starts: July 26
Season starts: Saturday, Aug. 24 (Week Zero)
Arizona

Camp starts: July 31
Season starts: Thursday, Aug. 29
Arizona State
UCLA
Utah

Camp starts: Aug. 1
Season starts: Friday, Aug. 30
Colorado
Oregon State

Camp starts: Aug.  2
Season starts: Saturday, Aug. 31
Cal
Oregon
Stanford
USC
Washington
Washington State

This year, the NCAA’s fall competition calendar has 15 Saturdays, creating two bye weeks.

Eventually, hopefully, the season will start earlier for everyone — on what is now Week Zero — in years when the regular calendar would allow for only one bye. The players should have two breaks every year. — Jon Wilner

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Hot off the Hotline

Content production on the Hotline website resumes this week. Prior to the mid-summer hiatus, we examined:

• The strongest and weakest units for each team in the North and South, Pac-12 efforts on environmental sustainability the state of the search for a strategic partner and a radical suggestion to help offset the time zone challenge.

Why we need your support: Like so many other providers of local journalism across the country, the Hotline’s parent website, mercurynews.com, recently moved to a subscription model. A few Hotline stories will remain free each month (as will this newsletter), but for access to all content, you’ll need to subscribe at a rate of just 12 cents per day for 12 months.

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State of Affairs

Perspective on the conference from beyond its borders …

• CBS Sports columnist Dennis Dodd produced his annual Hot Seat rankings and, not surprisingly, included a certain head coach from a certain team that went 5-7 and lost to all three of its California rivals last year … In the latest installment of its so-called offseason reset series, CollegeBasketballTalk focuses on the Pac-12. Listed first in the Key Offseason Storylines: “Who is getting hit with NCAA sanctions?” CBT also slots Arizona on top of the early power ratings.

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In the News

(Note: The Hotline newsletter includes links to sites that could require a subscription once the number of free views has been reached.)

• USC has broken from tradition and, for the first time, will play an FCS opponent. UC Davis visits the Coliseum in 2021.

• Utah’s recent history is loaded with examples of the Utes outperforming expectations. That won’t be as easy in 2019.

• The hype for Cal’s defense is understandably high, but is it too high?

• Washington’s newest commitment in the class of 2020 has a familiar name: running back Sam Adams II.

• Arizona landed a ballcarrier for 2020, as well: Jalen John, who’s from Lake Oswego, Ore., and reportedly was pursued by both in-state programs.

• In this countdown of Oregon State’s top players, freshman receiver Jesiah Irish is No. 7. (He looked darn good in the spring game.)

• Buffzone previews Colorado’s depth chart — specifically, the running backs: “What’s left at CU is a collection of talented underclassmen with a lot to prove.”

• azcentral does the same for Arizona State, where one tailback has nothing to prove after a 1,600-yard season.

• Former Washington State quarterback Ryan Leaf did quality work for the Pac-12 Networks and Sirius XM. He’s joining ESPN as an analyst for ESPN2 and ESPNU broadcasts.

• Meanwhile, a more recent former Cougar, safety Jalen Thompson, was selected in the supplemental draft after losing his final season of eligibility to an NCAA violation.

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Mark Your Calendars

• CollegeFootballSchedules, one of our favorite sites, offered a breakdown of a subtle fact of life: The number of games each team plays against opponents coming off a bye matters, and it varies widely. In the Pac-12, four teams caught a break in that regard: Arizona State, Oregon, USC and Washington.

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ADs Corner

• Prior to the start of the final season of his decade as Oregon’s athletic director, Rob Mullens chatted with The Athletic’s Tyson Alger on a variety of topics, including Mario Cristobal’s extension, coaching staff turnover, the evolution of Oregon’s brand, the baseball program, the challenges ahead and more: “We borrow a line from our friends up in Beaverton: We want to be relentlessly self-critical. We want to be focused on continuous improvement. And what can we do? Where can we tweak? What can we change to make sure that we’re continuing along that path?”

• Arizona State just completed its most successful all-sports cycle in many years, and AD Ray Anderson reflected on the 12 months — and the broader sweep of his five-and-a-half-year tenure — with azcentral’s Jeff Metcalfe. The candid conversation touched on Anderson’s hits and misses, including coaching staff hires. “I have not done a good enough job in some cases of vetting and really convincing some of our first-time women’s head coaches that building the culture is the really the most important thing.”

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Legal Affairs

• The Fair Pay To Play Act, which would allow college athletes in California to be compensated for the use of their Name, Image and Likeness — and force a showdown with the NCAA’s amateurism model — zoomed through the the Committee on Higher Education last week and has one more stop (appropriations) before a full vote in Sacramento.

• How might the NCAA solve the issue of NIL? “The only way I can see it being done is if the universities or the conferences or the NCAA takes the initiative and creates a fund,” former Alabama quarterback Greg McElroy told CBS Sports. “At the end of the year, all the money that’s in that fund gets redistributed.”

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Looking Ahead

What’s coming on the Pac-12 Hotline:

• We couldn’t help casting an eye to the point spreads for the regular-season openers — not for monetary reasons, of course, but because those lines will help frame expectations for Week One, which help frame expectations for Week Two, and Week Three …

• No better way to assess the smattering of news that unfolded over the Hotline’s two-week hiatus than with a Pac-12 stock report.

• The annual Pac-12 football media day is next Wednesday in Hollywood. We’ll preview the event, cover the news and review the notable developments.

The next newsletter is scheduled for Friday. Enjoy it? Please forward this email to friends (sign up here). If you don’t, or have other feedback, let me know: pac12hotline@bayareanewsgroup.com.

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*** Follow me on Twitter: @WilnerHotline

*** Pac-12 Hotline is not endorsed or sponsored by the Pac-12 Conference, and the views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of the Conference.