5 Thoughts on USC and UCLA’s move to the Big Ten

Now that we’ve had time to digest the huge news that USC and UCLA are joining the Big Ten in 2024, here are five thoughts on the implications this will have for the future of the Big Ten and college football as a whole.

You could see this coming from far away

Last year, when Oklahoma and Texas defected to the SEC to strengthen an already dominant conference, you knew the Big Ten needed to make a move to counter.

Whether the move was going to happen a few months after Oklahoma and Texas left last year, this year, or soon after, there had already been buzz about USC and UCLA moving conferences, and voilà, it happened.

The funny thing about this move was the supposed “alliance” that the PAC-12, Big Ten, and ACC made in reaction to the SEC expansion news last year, and you just got the feeling that one conference was lying through their teeth.

It happened to be the Big Ten that blew it up. Kevin Warren and the rest of the Big Ten presidents. Go figure.

Apparently, though, the alliance was on shaky grounds, as there were several disagreements over the future of playoff expansion, and conference scheduling, among other topics. So, the Big Ten didn’t want to deal with it and just blew up the alliance.

The alliance was supposed to be a gentleman’s handshake with an agreement that no conferences in the alliance would try to poach teams from another league to their conference.

The issue with this alliance was no contracts were signed, binding the conferences together (or at least making it harder to poach other programs), so a “gentleman’s agreement” doesn’t mean anything in today’s money-driven world.

This brings me to my next thought…