UCLA and Southern California on Thursday seemed ready to jump from the Pac-12 conference to the Big Ten in the coming years, a move that will trigger another seismic reshaping of the competitive and economic landscape of college sports.
The maneuver came when the Big Ten, whose membership currently includes 14 universities in the predominantly Midwest, stretching from Nebraska to New Jersey, ended with a new television contract that was expected to be among the richest in the history of college sports. The top ten were expected to receive official applications from California universities as early as Thursday, with a presidency of university presidents and chancellors likely to follow shortly thereafter.
The big dozen bumps in the Southern California media market will undoubtedly establish it as the most powerful counterweight to the Southeast Conference and will further concentrate influence in an industry bombarded by political and legal pressure on athletes’ rights. The eviction of UCLA and USC would also jeopardize the Pac-12 conference, which has counted schools in its ranks since the 1920s, but in recent years has struggled to keep pace financially and on the ground with the Big Ten and the SEC.
It wasn’t even a year ago when Oklahoma and Texas decided to leave the Big 12 conference for the SEC, which has recently been the country’s leading college football league. Their moves have caused restructuring across the country.
However, the lists of Big Ten and Pac-12 members remained unchanged during the turmoil. Leagues seeking scrutiny of the SEC’s swell may even join forces with the Atlantic Coast Conference, another Power 5 league, on some issues.
Then came the threat of desertions on Thursday, discussed in secret for months and first reported by The Mercury News.
A person familiar with the discussions, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were private, said UCLA and USC had approached the Big Ten about the possibility of joining the league. Especially in an industry governed by contracts and regulations, with millions of dollars a year set aside for schools in Power 5 conferences, the sequence of events can be crucial for legal reasons.
If both Big Ten and SEC expand as expected, each will have at least 16 universities over the next few years, including some of the most popular brands in university sports. Membership of the Big Ten already includes Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Penn and Wisconsin.
The addition of USC and UCLA will certainly contribute to the growth of the Big Ten, and possibly to its television ratings. The two universities in Los Angeles have been anchors to the Pac-12 in its various forms over the decades, with a long history of attracting attention for athletic achievement.
The USC has long been the West Coast College football franchise with its long list of national championship teams, Heisman Trophy winners and its distinctive white horse, the Traveler, carrying a Trojan horse mascot up and down the side at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
Across the city of Westwood, UCLA is projecting a similar position in men’s basketball, with the Bruins playing under 11 banners for the Pauley Pavilion National Championship and boasting a rich catalog of alumni who have participated in the NBA.
The USC, which is planning the debut of Lincoln Riley, a former coach in Oklahoma, has reduced its football strength since the early 2000s, when it won a share of two national titles and constantly competed for others under coach Pete Carroll. The UCLA football team has been fighting for local relevance in recent years. But schools have many advantages for the Big Ten, including a stable presence in the nation’s second-largest television market and even smoother access to one of its richest recruitment bases.
In recent years, when the Pac-12’s wealth has dwindled in football – and when the league has been hampered by a televised deal that pays its schools tens of millions of dollars less a year than the Big Ten contract – schools like Alabama, Ohio, Georgia and Clemson regularly dig up Southern California for elite talent.
Beyond football and men’s basketball, UCLA and USC are forces in so-called Olympic sports. The USC, for example, has won national beach volleyball, women’s and men’s tennis championships over the past decade. For its part, UCLA has won recent titles in baseball, beach volleyball, women’s gymnastics, women’s football, softball and women’s tennis. Both schools have also won water polo titles, which is not a sport sponsored by the Pac-12 for men or women.
Overshadowed by potential financial windfall revenue is the increased burden on athletes, whether football players or long-distance runners, who will travel regularly to travel from Los Angeles to remote campuses at State College, Pennsylvania; New Brunswick, New Jersey; and College Park, Md., for competition.
Any deal that entices USC and UCLA is likely to be overshadowed by Kevin Warren, the Big Ten commissioner who drew criticism in 2020, when his league initially decided not to play the fall football season due to the pandemic. Although the conference eventually overturned its decision and organized some of the games it had planned, the episode overshadowed Warren’s tenure. (Pac-12, led by Larry Scott, also canceled and revived its 2020 football season.)
At the same time, the potential departures from USC and UCLA represent a sharp test for George Klyavkov, who became commissioner of Pac-12 a year ago. Last August, following the decisions of Oklahoma and Texas, the league said it had no plans to expand “currently,” in part because of “the current competitiveness and cohesion of our 12 universities.”
Kevin Draper contributed to the report.
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