Thursday night the news broke that USC and UCLA are joining the Big Ten in 2024-2025. This means that they will have sixteen teams in the conference when they join. The move comes eleven months after Texas and Oklahoma are going to the SEC. It’s a big deal that USC and UCLA are coming, because that gives the Big Ten schools, on the east and west coasts, plus the founding members, in the midwest. It has been reported that the Big Ten is working on a media deal with networks worth a billion dollars.
USC and UCLA both were in the PAC 12 and were only making nineteen million in revenue sharing. Big Ten schools are set to make eighty to one hundred million a year with this new media deal. It’s a no brainer from that point, plus it helps the big ten in football and all other sports. Both of the schools are great academic schools too.
The big questions now are, does the Big Ten add more and what does Oregon and Washington do now? They both could stay in the Pac 12 and be big fishes in a small pond, or do they leave the Pac 12 too. USC and UCLA are coming with over two hundred national championships combined. Overall, I think this is a great deal for both parties, but I wonder if this is the start of a two power conferences between SEC and Big Ten. Only time will tell and we have two years to think about it too.