College football realignment: Insider reveals the Big Ten's next move

The latest phase of college football realignment finds the Big Ten getting more aggressive.

College football realignment is in the air once again after USC and UCLA decided to join the Big Ten in 2024, and now all eyes are on that conference's next move.

The addition of the two Los Angeles-based schools makes the Big Ten the first coast-to-coast football conference and brings membership up to 16 teams.

And the decision has increased speculation that the Big Ten has its eyes on adding even more members to further increase its control over the sport.

But according to Iowa athletic director Gary Barta, it appears the Big Ten is content to sit where it is now and consolidate its holdings.

“I know the Big Ten has taken calls, and they inform us when they take calls just so we have a general idea," Barta, a one-time chairman of the College Football Playoff selection committee, told reporters. 

"But if I were predicting, I’m not predicting that we would be adding any more in the near future. We’ll see.”

Barta confirmed that leaders inside the Big Ten addressed expanding the conference to include Notre Dame after news broke that the SEC would add Texas and Oklahoma.

But nothing came of that interest and the Big Ten pressed pause on expansion.

That is, until USC and UCLA applied to join the conference. Looking at the current and future economic landscape, the Big Ten had no practical choice than to accept.

Better to have two flagship programs in the nation's second-largest media market in your conference rather than another and helping a competitor.

As ever, the Notre Dame question still hangs over the latest phase of college football realignment.

The school has maintained its independence in football thanks to a generous deal with NBC and continued access to the College Football Playoff.

But if either of those should change, Notre Dame might be open to joining up.

Barta said that the Big Ten does indeed want to add the Irish, but that a formal decision on the matter probably is coming right away.

“I don’t anticipate that being a decision that I’ll be making this summer,” he said. “But again, I don’t have a crystal ball. But it’s not before us right now.”

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