I am on lunch break from work and not drunk or high, but this just crossed my radar.
Ok, I get that college football is all about money but how does this make financial sense? UCLA and USC are both fine academically, but still, they’re thousands of miles away from the Big 10. I assume the is would be only for football, I can’t see a track or a swimming team flying across the country just for a random meet in February.
No, it would almost certainly be for all sports. Schools in the Big 12, most of which have fewer resources than USC and UCLA already deal with this to some degree (West Virginia is over 1,000 miles I think from its nearest Big 12 conference opponent, and it is in the Big 12 in all sports.)
Also the B1G is likely not open to them joining as partial members, nor is the PAC-12 open to them remaining as non-football members.
The amount of money that the Big Ten Network will be pulling in with this will more than make up for travel expenses.
I’ve watched a decent amount of PAC 10 and 12 basketball and the travel usually works out well for a Thursday and Saturday schedule, play at Oregon State on Thursday and Oregon on Saturday works out well and the travel isn’t too bad.
Ohio State and Rutgers in a weekend would require a plane trip and at least they’re also in cities with large airports.
What kind of uber-strict employer do you slave under?!
Lol, well we do have beer in the office for after market close (I work in the financial markets) but the comment was because the first reports I saw on this were from junky blogs, but seeing CBS Sports and ESPN report it convinced me that this wasn’t just some blogger in a basement stirring up shit just for fun at a dead time in college sports.
So much for the “regionality” of conferences.
Loooooong gone, my friend.
I guess now the conference can change its logo to B16
The first thing that came to my mind was that it will be weird having Big Ten football teams in places where it doesn’t snow.
To me, “regionality” died when WVU joined the Big 12. It’s still weird watching WVU and UT regularly play each other in football.
Sports like Track and Swimming have a very different structure than sports like football and basketball.
I ran track (D3) in college and although we did participate in a few meets and invitationals that were 700+ miles from our school most of them were in our local region against other regional schools. The conference championships used to rotate around different schools but that only pops up once a season.
Apparently this is a done deal. Had I just woken up, I’d think I was high or am drunk!
That sucks. Conferences are getting too big. In football at least you don’t see enough of the other teams. Now if they have 2 divisions of 8 teams each you’d play 7 in-division games and only 2 cross-division games, so you only see your cross-division schools once in four years. But money talks so fuck it’s a done deal.
It has been decades since I was interested in college sports, but I did attend a Big 10 school (Illinois - NOT a sports powerhouse!). Back then the football teams played each other team each season, at home one year and away the next. Basketball played each other team once at home and once away. The championship was based on the best record from the season games. The Rose Bowl featured Big 10 vs Pac 10 champs. I drove out to see UofI shellacked by UCLA.
The SEC, Pac 10, Big 10 - each of them had a history and traditions that were somewhat different. All Big 10 other than Northwestern were big midwestern state schools - mostly land grant.
Now the Big 10 is - what - 16? Featuring USC, UCLA, and who knows who else? Do any sports fans care about conferences anymore? Is there any pretense thatchy are anything other than TV marketing devices? Is there any reason to pretend that these are anything other than professional money generating enterprises?
No, and there hasn’t been for some time.
And, while I’m sure the Ohio State or Michigan game against USC will draw ratings and money, what about that Rutgers vs UCLA game which starts at 10 PM East Coast time on a Saturday night? And this is coming from me who enjoys the late night west coast games during college football season.
Yep. And it leaves the remaining Pac-12 hurt. This sucks.
I have to admit, that I thought it all was going to distill down into the Power 4, with the inevitable dissolution of the Big-12 and the desperate attempts for the remaining non-OU or UT teams to find a place in one of the Power 4 conferences or be relegated to obscurity.
I did not foresee teams shifting between the Pac-12 and Big-10, and certainly not marquee programs like USC and UCLA.
What’s the long-term fallout of this? Clearly the Big-10 is stronger for it, and the Pac-12(10?) is weaker. But what does it do in terms of the landscape? What are the next moves? I’d be willing to bet that the SEC is done changing for a while, and that the Big-12 is a dead man walking until OU and UT leave for the SEC. But what happens to the Pac-12? Do they try and recruit 2 more teams from somewhere- the Big-12? Maybe Baylor and TCU or (God help them), Texas Tech)?
I’ve always thought the heart of the PAC 10 was Los Angeles with USC and UCLA, the Rose Bowl and the Coliseum. I really can’t see any other school in the LA area joining which leaves a huge hole in the new conference. Washington State or Oregon State aren’t going to bring in the same number of eyeballs and national interest.
That’s kind of what I was thinking- the core schools were USC, UCLA, Oregon, Berkeley(Cal) and Stanford, as far as the longest, best teams were concerned.
Well then, I guess we have good news for you! 
Conference realignment giveth and conference realignment taketh away