Maybe "Seismic Shift" Isn't the Best Word Choice in re USC and UCLA...

July 1, 2022 7:08 AM

The Big Ten Conference started as a Midwestern group of colleges. It grew beyond its original number in the 1990s by adding Penn State, then in the 2010s by poaching Nebraska from the Big 12, then Maryland from the ACC and Rutgers from the Big East. And now it's made its biggest expansion yet in both prestige and geography, stretching the B1G footprint all the way to Los Angeles with the addition of USC and UCLA.

The move (like most such moves in college athletics) is primarily about money -- the member schools of the B1G make around $55 million per year from athletics, compared to the Pac-12's $33 million per school. The move will likely lead to major changes across all of college athletics, and probably a lot of jet lag.

posted by Etrigan (19 comments total)

I have no idea how a USC lacrosse team will get back and forth between a Rutgers game. Obviously we will see college football as it’s own entity and all other sports fall under normal regional competition. This is stupid but inevitable. Even basketball doesn’t commandeer anywhere near the revenue of football. National Champions and perennial favorites KU brings in less than their middling football team.
posted by geoff. at 7:16 AM on July 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

Will night games in the pacific time zone finally be enough to get me to break up my terrible relationship with Iowa Hawkeye football?

Lol, almost certainly not, which is why I have compassion for my mother's continued smoking.
posted by the primroses were over at 7:24 AM on July 1, 2022 [3 favorites]

I have to wonder if there is a point where the egregious abuse of student athletes becomes so apparent that others - federal government, state governments, university system offices (where applicable), accreditors, etc. - have to step in and begin holding the institutions accountable for (a) abusing their students and (b) straying so far from their missions.

Not to mention the somewhat small but still unnecessary environmental damage that this kind of extensive travel will have...
posted by ElKevbo at 7:27 AM on July 1, 2022 [4 favorites]

I have been a student at two schools in the original Big 10, and have a degree from one; I also have a Master's from Rutgers, so it was interesting for me when Rutgers joined the Big Bunch o' Schools.

I am not attached to my schools the way some people are, and I don't follow football or basketball, yet I have been amused to see myself having a curmudgeonly reaction to the Big 10 expanding. As if it was objectively better back in the day, and any change must be for the worse.

I would like to see student athletes get better treatment. Have any of the rest of you seen the absolutely devastating news about decades of sexual abuse by a team physician at Michigan (one of my degree schools. Go Blue! So proud!)? I feel like it hasn't gotten the attention of the world the way the Larry Nassar or Joe Paterno cases have, but it involved the abuse of hundreds of young men. Perhaps because the doctor was dead before the cases began to come to light, but it's the same old story—lots of people knew, and no action was taken to protect the athletes he was preying on.
posted by Well I never at 7:43 AM on July 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

Great. Now PAY THE PLAYERS.
posted by nickggully at 9:07 AM on July 1, 2022 [5 favorites]

NIL shows they are now paying the players in some sense.

But the non-revenue sports in the PAC-12 are going to be trashed. As well as football for the schools that are being left behind in the PAC-1X.
posted by Windopaene at 9:59 AM on July 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

I wonder why the present Big-10 and Pac-12 just don't secede from the NCAA and form their own partnership?

College Football is the one that brings in the money and that is already outside the NCAA purview. The only moneymaker for NCAA is college BB, but with the NBA starting the G league and players figuring out not going to college for 1-and-done, that product is going to steadily deteriorate.

So why not just form a partnership between the two conferences and have 14 teams on each side and have a post-season tournament for all sports that just involves these two conferences?

This way they can go back to what began this whole thing in the first place. And impose stricter regulations for themselves to make sure that the athletes are actually getting a real education.
posted by indianbadger1 at 10:08 AM on July 1, 2022

What exactly is the point of conferences at this point? Even divisions and conferences in the majors (football, basketball, baseball, hockey) have some semblance of regionalism attached to them. Let's just call d1 a minor league. Pay the players. Team them up by the school they attend. But re-divide out the country into better conferences that serve as nothing more than divisions.

This will be bad for the players, and not even great for the fans. Will evening basketball games air at UCLA start at 8pm PST? So Rutgers fans watching will see that starting at 11pm? This just screams greed (both for UCLA/USC as well as the Big Ten themselves). Please just stop all of this.
posted by hydra77 at 10:39 AM on July 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

That USC and UCLA are giving up century-long rivalries with Stanford and Berkeley in order to have annual games with Perdue and Illinois-Champaign is ridiculous. And yes, very hard to see how this works for both travel costs and academic obligations for the non-revenue sports.

Gonna be interesting to see what the PAC-12 does. BYU, Utah State, Colorado State add some natural rivals for CU and Utah. Tech companies that do corporate entertaining tied to Cal and Stanford away games would appreciate Hawaii coming in. But the TV contract is going to be painful no matter what.
posted by MattD at 10:54 AM on July 1, 2022 [3 favorites]

the primroses were over, I too have a troubled relationship with Iowa Hawkeye football. Well, college football generally, but especially the program I grew up watching.

There’s a lot about this to not like. The best outcome, to me, anyway, is hosting either USC or UCLA for a frigid night game at Kinnick. That would be a WILD scene.
posted by Caxton1476 at 11:11 AM on July 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

Can’t wait for the Oregon-UCLA Rose Bowl game.
posted by hwyengr at 11:39 AM on July 1, 2022 [5 favorites]

This is so dumb. Not because I care about traditions or rivalries, but the fact that one sport, which makes hundreds of millions of dollars, is the only one that matters and now college athletes in other sports, which already lose money, will be flying all over the country to play their games.

College football exists outside of any 'normal' college sporting universe, the fact that every team is tied to them is obnoxious. They should make new college football divisions and make them separate from the other school sports.
posted by chaz at 11:41 AM on July 1, 2022 [5 favorites]

Somewhat related, I think it was Metafilter where my favorite geographical factoid came from, that the definition of the Midwest is the states that had a Big Ten team when there were 10 teams in the Big Ten.
posted by hwyengr at 11:45 AM on July 1, 2022 [10 favorites]

I'm proud that I've decathected quite a bit from the college football I was obsessed with growing up in Columbus--too brutal, too exploitative--so much so that I didn't even realize UT and Oklahoma had joined the SEC. I was still paying attention when Rutgers and Maryland joined the Big 10, and this seems to be a move in that mold: get major television markets, even in areas where people don't particularly care about Big 10 sports, and cash the checks.

In the charmless landscape of money college sports I find it quaint that the Big 10, in spite of everything, seems to continue to insist on having only quality academic schools (every member is in the AAU other than Nebraska, who were when they joined; in comparison, I think the SEC schools in the AAU are UT, Mizzou, TA&M, UF, and Vandy). We'll fly the softball team from L.A. to State College, whatever, but some things are just beyond the pale.
posted by sy at 12:00 PM on July 1, 2022

And impose stricter regulations for themselves to make sure that the athletes are actually getting a real education.

Ha! I don’t think so.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 5:51 AM on July 4, 2022

I was told this is - or is close to - the Big Ten's wishlist. But it's a fluid and very well-guarded process (How was the UCLA/USC news kept silent? Amazing.)

So who knows how it'll develop.

1. Notre Dame
2. Oregon
3. Stanford
4. UNC

Source not as confident in UNC as others.
posted by Etrigan at 10:57 AM on July 5, 2022

The folks at CBS Sports have some fun with potential headlines.

(As an SC alum, I'm not really happy about this, even though I get what's driving it all.)
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:52 PM on July 5, 2022 [3 favorites]

Drew Magary at SFGATE winnows college football down into the inevitable evil superconference
posted by the primroses were over at 3:47 PM on July 5, 2022

The next set of dominoes might be Virginia, Florida State, North Carolina, and Clemson to the SEC, if one can believe that swimming coaches might be in the loop.
posted by Etrigan at 10:48 AM on July 7, 2022