Get Ready Because Sea Change Coming to College Sports

USC, UCLA leaving Pac 12 for Big Ten to match SEC could start tidal wave of change

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — This has been kinda obvious for awhile now.

And Frank Broyles' decision back in 1990 will have Arkansas staying in the ballgame of what is about to become a madhouse in college sports.

USC and UCLA are joining the Big Ten, according to a report from Pete Thamel at ESPN.com after an earlier report from the San Jose Mercury News and it's a "done deal."

Spoke to a few sources who called USC and UCLA's move to the Big Ten a formality, with a press conference expected in next 24 hours. Perhaps as soon as tonight. This is essentially done.

— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) June 30, 2022

Now the Big Ten has kept pace with the SEC's addition of Texas and Oklahoma.

As I've said for years, if you think this is about competitive balance or geographics these days in college athletics, you are dead wrong.

It's an arms race to get eyeballs glued to televisions, phones or whatever. That's where the money is and it has nothing to do with people buying a regular seat in the stands.

Once this is completed there will be two 16-team conferences with the biggest television viewership. The SEC and Big Ten already dwarf everybody else and it's about to get bigger.

“You have to be a moron to not think about it,” a Big Ten source told SI's Ross Dellenger. “They would have gone somewhere else if we said ’no.’”

It could happen as soon as the 2024 football season, which is going to cause a rash of action of the Pac 12 in response to losing a couple of marquee teams and maybe a lawsuit in California, which seems to generate a lot of that.

There are few people that think it will be longer than that for Texas and Oklahoma to start playing games in the SEC.

Now it's about to become a free-for-all.

In the sports that matter (football and basketball), this is television gold if they can figure out a way to fit the golden dome at Notre Dame into the picture.

Joshua A. Bickel / USA TODAY Sports

The SEC and Big Ten could control 32 of the biggest brands in all of college sports. You can bet the ACC is trying to get there as well.

Three 16-team conferences forms a group of 48 that literally could play a national championship playoff on their own. Few of the leftovers would have had a chance to get there anyway.

Nobody is saying that have to stop at 16, either, which could make things REALLY interesting.

Don't say it can't happen.

Unless you saw a way for the Trojans and Bruins to move to the Big Ten.

And however it goes, the Hogs are sitting in good shape without having to do a thing other than stay in the SEC.

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