Is the Big 10 Getting Too Big?

or Wisconsin or Penn State. But that's what will happen soon enough, thanks to USC and u c l A leaving the Pack twelve for the Big Ten, a seismic shake up in college sports that has everyone talking. S I Senior writer Pat Forty joins me to discuss the shifting landscape, the ripple effects, and whether these kinds of superpower conferences are good for the schools, the athletes and us the fans. I'm your host, John Gonzalez from Sports

Illustrated and I Heart Radio. This is Sports Illustrated Weekly. Pat Forty, Welcome back to Sports Illustrated Weekly. Hey, good to be with you, John Love when you're on a lot of questions for you. As you know, I live in Los Angeles, which is in California. I did great in geography at school. But I checked on it, and last I checked before this. Most of the Big Ten

is very far from California. And yet the Big Ten made big news and announcing that it would add to l A legacy programs in U C, l A, and USC to the conference. And we're following major breaking news out of college athletics. Big Ten is expanding all the way out west. The addition of the Trojans and the Bruins make it sixteen teams in total. Hot. I was floord, let's just start here. What was your reaction to this?

Completely floored? This soul broke a June and well, quite honestly, I was sitting in a Raman restaurant eating with my son and it was one of those frozen with the chopsticks of noodles in front of my face, like what. I looked at my phone and somebody said that to me. I was like, there's no way, there is no way that just happened. And you know, we've kind of been spinning through disbelief to you know, the whole all those stages of grief, anger, acceptance, you know, guilt, whatever the

case may be. Uh, it's been a wild a few weeks early a month trying to process this whole thing. So I was floored. You were surprised as well. I guess this is sort of a process question, but it seems like a lot of this was orchestrated in secrecy. There were reports that on June thirty, at USC and U c l A submitted formal applications to join the Big Ten, and those applications were approved immediately the same day.

And then The Athletic reported that only about ten people at USC, at the entire school were privy to the discussions before it was announced. So what does it say about this process that all of it was done behind closed doors? Yeah, I mean that's the world we live in college athletics and questions. Is this really where we

want to live? A world of skullduggery, uh plan destined behavior, you know, admit to nothing, deceive, you know, keep your a lot of important people on your campus in the dark, keep your colleagues at the other schools in your conference in the dark. College sports has has long been addicted to, I think a silly level of secrecy in terms of

like coaching searches and stuff like that. But this is taking into a whole other level, because these are half a billion dollar decisions over a course of you know, ten years, twenty years, whatever the case may be. These are massive, massive decisions that you would think would need to be run through a lot of channels to go ahead with. But but we have reached a point where nobody feels like they need to lay cards on the table and just be honest with their constituency, with their colleagues,

with their competitors. Before we go more into how this unfolded, just from like a pure I guess we could look at the big sports like football and basketball, but from a collection of talent here do we like this for the Big Ten? Well, I I guess you look at it two ways one one way, Yeah, for the Big Ten. This is their answer in a very strong answer to Texas and Oklahoma going to the SEC. And so it is for the reasons that they did this for revenue

and marketability. It's it's a huge game to get the Los Angeles market to become the first coast to coast league to bring in one of the most storied football programs in history in USC and one of the most storied men's basketball programs in history in u c l A. You know, two programs that are phenomenal in Olympic sports, to schools that are outstanding academically. It checks every box for what you would like in your conference, and it will check a big revenue box with Fox Sports and

other TV partners. If you're USC in U c l A, you're looking at this and saying, well, we've made a lot of money. I don't know whether it helps them beyond that. I think it makes it harder for them to compete. I think it creates incredible travel hardships and

logistical hardships for their athletes. It's I think it's a bummer for their fans, who you may like some of the freshness of it, but instead of being able to say, hey, let's go up the coast to the Bay Area to see our team play this weekend, you're like, well, can we afford to fly to State College Pennsylvania to see our team play this weekend? I mean, you know, maybe a trip to Nebraska? Right? I mean yeah, right? And you know who doesn't want to go to Lincoln in November.

A lot to impact there. You hit on a lot of really good points. I think the most important one is that it's money, right, it's money for the Big ten, it's money for USC and U C l A. But you also mentioned, and you wrote about this as well, that this was sort of a response for the Big ten to what the SEC did in adding Oklahoma and Texas. Basically, this is an arms race, right, absolutely, that's exactly what it is. It's a TV arms race, and it's a

two conference arms race. Is the two biggest getting bigger, too, strongest, getting stronger. It's Fox against the ESPN, Fox A line with the Big ten, ESPN line with the SEC, and everybody else is just being further pushed to the side as these two megapowers accelerate their kind of a competition

with each other. When you talk about everybody else being pushed aside, is this the end for the because we talk about the Power five conferences, but really it's the Power too and everybody else now, right, yeah, it is absolutely, you know, I mean, that doesn't mean Clemson can't be really good. And when national tizing the Tigers reclaimed their crown by crushing Alabama, doesn't mean a team from the

Big twelve, Baylor and Oklahoma State can't be good. It doesn't mean that an Oregon cannot compete for a national title. But it's harder now, it is more difficult. You are further behind in revenue, and you know what, what is revenue being used for? Now? Most everybody's built every facility

you could possibly need. So the next thing is name, image and likeness money, And now you've got more of that you can give the players, which I am not opposed to players getting the money, but this has become purely a transactional situation here. So it's that it's how big can our staff be, how much can we pay our coaches? And you just try to money whip your competition, and it's just harder and harder for everybody outside the

power to to compete with those two conferences. We've had you on this program to talk about n I L before, and that's a really interesting component of it that I hadn't previously considered because I think like a few years ago USC in U c l A, the actual quality of their programs had lost a little bit of the luster and diminished a little bit. How does n I L factor in for these two schools? Do you expect them to become dominant forces again because of it? And

also because they're joining the Big Ten. Well, I mean it gives them kind of a renewed uh injection. I think of competitiveness in those areas. Now, USC had kind of already gotten there in the last offseason, right, USC has found its new football coach Oklahoma suitors Lincoln Riley, Traits,

Crimson and Cream for Cardinal and Gold. They hired Lincoln Riley, and it was it was basically, Okay, we're gonna go take this home run swing, spend ninety million dollars higher this coach, but then we're gonna have to do everything that he says we need to do to compete, which is going to be major n I L commitments there, you know, and as you started seeing them landing big time recruits and hey, there's a lot to like about USC in Los Angeles. But it wasn't just for the beaches.

It's because there's gonna have to have some opportunities to earn a lot of money. And I think being in Los Angeles having huge alumni basis with a lot of wealthy donors. I'm not sure how many all of them care about football, but nothing of them probably do that you can go to them and say, hey, we need fifteen million a year ten million a year for N I L purposes? Are you enter, you out? And so

I think that's kind of the next step. And I think with those Los Angeles based schools that they'll have a chance to to mind that particular area. All right. So, as we mentioned, good for the schools in terms of money, probably good for the student athletes in terms of money. But in order for them to leave, they had to leave something. Where does this leave the Pack twelve and also the Big Twelve when we're talking about the SEC

defections of Oklahoma in Texas. Absolutely both conferences gutted of their lynch pins. You know that the two most important properties in each conference both gone. They're both hurting, no doubt about it. And that's why there has been a lot of talk John in the last couple of weeks about put these two conferences one of their so weak and would one poach the other. There's no such thing as working together anymore in college sports, so it's more

like who's turning on whom? Uh? And I think the Big Twelve has made it pretty clear they would take some teams from the PAC twelve. The Pac twelve was mad about that but really, I mean, we're still waiting actually to see if like Oregon and Washington could go to the Big Ten. I don't think that's imminent by any stretch, but just the the very stability of the PAC twelve and the Big twelve is so frail at this point and so fraught, and they're not in it

to help each other. They are in it to compete against each other for you know what whatever. Uh, you know, it's next in the totem pole after the top two conferences, it's those two in the A C C. I'll just kind of scrapping it out. Yeah, it's it's really interesting to see how these dominoes are gonna fall and whether or not more teams will get poached. But for their to be teams poached, somebody has to do the poaching.

I'm wondering about Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren, where he falls in all of this, and how he's being perceived. It's obviously a boon for the conference, but I would imagine other commissioners around the league probably not that happy with him. Oh, I mean, like George Clicoff, I am sure,

is very bitter towards Kevin Warren. George Clicoff, the commissioner of the PAC twelve for the last year and last summer they had the quote unquote alliance between the PAC twelve, the Big Ten, and the a c C to basically kind of ward off SEC aggression more than anything. But part of that was, hey, we're in this together. And then you know, eleven months later, Kevin Warren just shanks George Clay Coffin takes us to best schools. So yeah,

there's some real bitterness there. But Kevin Warren's boy, what a evolution he's had in if you remember the Big Ten. At first, wasn't going to play football and people were vilifying him viciously. I mean to the point of death threats, and not just a couple, but like hundreds of death threats. People wanted him out as commissional. People thought he was weak, out of touch, couldn't do it. And then last year it looks like, okay, they're falling further behind the SEC,

which makes the Big Power move. Well, now he answers with this move, and I think he's he's got a new lease on life. I saw him at Big Ten media days, and he has a a swagger and a confidence about him that was non existing a couple of years ago. Some really stark winners and losers and all of this. Last one for you, Pad, I want to ask you about us. Take off your journalism hat. Just as a consumer of college sports? Are we winners or losers in this? Do we like this? Just from a

consumption standpoint? I don't think so. I don't like it, you know, to each their own, probably, But my feeling is college football is at its best when it is a national sport with different unique regional flavors that all kind of stitched together, and the Pack twelve, which have been around since the nineteen twenties. Schools were most of the schools in the league. We're in there from the

vet from that time on for a century. You lose something when there's not a West Coast champion, so to speak, out there, you know, when when those schools are being farmed out to go compete with schools they really don't have much in common with. Uh, you lose something there, and you lose something when the Southwest no longer as you know, revolves around Texas and Oklahoma. It's just like, well, they're just in there with Georgia and Alabama. You know

we've already gone, We've crossed the rubagne to agree. Already we have West Virginia playing in the same conference with Texas Tech. Alright, it's already ridiculous. But now you know, we're not talking about us for June. We're talking about USC We're talking about Texas, And I think you are losing something that's really part of the the appeal of college football. Yeah. I love the West Coast rivalries. I'm less confident that I'm gonna get jazzed up for like u C l A Iowa, but I guess we will

find out. Read his stories about college football and the Power Conference realignment on si dot com. He's the best in the biz. We'd make a commissioner over all of it if we could. Pat forty, thank you for this. Thank you, John, my pleasure, Thanks for listening, and a reminder to please rate and review the show that helps people find us. Sports Illustrated Weekly is a production of

Sports Illustrated and I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. And for more of Sports Illustrated It's best stories and podcasts, visit SI dot com. This episode of Sports Illustrated Weekly was produced by Jordan Rizzieri, Jessica your Mooski, and Isaac Lee, who was also our sound engineer. Our senior producers are Dan Bloom and Harry sward Out. Our executive producers are Scott

Brody and me John Gonzalez. Our theme song is by Nolan Schneider.