These moves combined with USC and UCLA's Big 10 relocation to the Big 10 that was announced last year for a 2024 arrival and the recent decision of Colorado to defect to the Big 12 leaves the Pac 12 with only California, Oregon State, Stanford, and Washington State as members in good standing past the 2023-24 athletic season.
One of the requests by USC, when they joined the Big 10, was that Oregon not receive a future invitation to the league but clearly either the Trojans were pacified or reluctantly pushed into tolerating the Ducks entry into the conference.
I'm not sure if I'm thrilled with the Ducks and Huskies entering the Big 10 and while I do think it is ridiculous for travel and especially for the non-revenue sports, in the current climate it was a move that the Big 10 almost had to make.
The Pac-12's two most recent commissioners have made mistake after mistake with their television contracts and have basically sat the conference on a ticking time bomb that would eventually blow up.
I understand why the Big 10 wanted Oregon and Washington as the game continues down a path of two conferences that essentially separates the sport between North (Big 10) and South (SEC) with the Big 12 and ACC as fun lesser leagues with a few notable schools that can compete at the national level.
And while I don't either team will struggle in the Big Ten, I'm not sure that Washington will be more than a middle to occasional upper level such as Iowa in the league, I could see Oregon with their Nike money behind them becoming a top five league presence, although not perhaps a title contender every season.
It is a bit ironic that after dumping divisional play in the conference for next year, the Big 10 may have to return to divisions before they were even phased out.
Eighteen is a very clumsy number and doesn't fit well into a full league or schedule setup, so it is very possible the league could be forced into a two-division/nine-team alignment, which might be more to my liking anyway when you consider the four Pac 12 newcomers would bolster the western division.
My divisional setup;
East: Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State, Maryland, Rutgers, Indiana, Purdue, Illinois
West: Wisconsin, Iowa, Northwestern, Minnesota, Nebraska, USC, UCLA, Oregon, Washington
I actually kinda like that and if you really wanted to make the Big 10 title game worthwhile, there is a way to do so.
Play eight games in your division and play the ninth against a team that finished in the same place as your team did in the previous season in the other division.
Or use the ninth game as a semi-final for the Big 10 title game with the other teams playing 3rd vs 3rd, 4th vs 4th, and so on.
Using this setup, only one rivalry would be lost (Illinois vs Northwestern) and if you really pushed creatively, you could make sure they played much as possible (perhaps making that game automatic, if the two teams were within two or three places of each other in the standings) and you would save the special aspect for the traditionalist, along with the different matchups on the next to last week of the season.
The Big Ten likely has an end game of twenty teams and while they would love the academic cache' that Stanford would bring, California would be a Rutgers-like drag on the conference, and taking both would also take away the long-term pining that eventually they would land Notre Dame.
As for the Big 12, well they did very well for themselves as they grabbed some gold for their league.
Utah brings a solid top-twenty program and returns their rivalry game with BYU to a conference battle,
Arizona offers an elite-level basketball school to what is arguably the best basketball conference in the country.
Arizona State is always thought of as a potential giant with the right coach and commitment and Colorado will add lots of attention as long as Deion Sanders is the coach there.
All four make the Big 12 stronger and while they lack a top-of-the-league power such as Clemson or potentially Florida State and Miami, what they possess is many schools with breakout potential and what I think is the most competitive league in the nation, top to bottom.
As for the remaining four Pac-12 schools, Oregon State and Washington State appear to be headed for the Mountain West unless the American decides to make a move but even so, the Mountain West is a better geographic fit with Boise State as a built-in immediate rival for both schools.
Hopefully, both schools will be able to keep their in-state rivalry games intact and it does seem that there is a willingness to do so.
Stanford and Cal are different cases.
Stanford as noted earlier would have some appeal to the Big 10 but not at the cost of adding Cal and I could see them trying out independence in hopes of the Big 10 adding down the road.
As for Cal, I could see Cal deciding to de-emphasize athletics and dropping down to a lower level or at least maybe 1-AA for football only.
In neither of those schools, do I see them going to the Mountain West (academics) or the American (same and travel), if the Big 10 wanted them, a bid would have been offered already, and the Big 12 isn't a fit on many fronts.
The ACC could make sense in theory with Stanford and Cal academic-wise but just imagine the travel costs for those two schools.
Does the logistics of adding those two add up to being worth either party's while?
Only the grant of rights held by the ACC is holding that league together as the ACC would love North Carolina and Virginia with Georgia Tech, Miami, and Duke as possibilities and the SEC would covet Clemson, Florida State, and North Carolina, although I could see the SEC picking up N.C. State in the event that North Carolina would be unavailable.
The real certainty is that college football is changing to a national sport rather than a regional sport with occasional national interests and while the sport continues to evolve, its changes aren't going to stop anytime soon.
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