USC and UCLA take proactive approach to realignment with Big Ten move

June, turning into July, usually is a pretty quiet time in college sports. Student-athletes are either at home or participating in optional workouts. No games, no practices, no drama.

But on Thursday morning, the entire status quo of college athletics burst into the sky like the grand finale of a Fourth of July firework show.

USC and UCLA are both working to leave the Pac-12 and join the Big Ten, according to multiple media reports, first reported by the Pac-12 Hotline’s Jon Wilner. The move is not official, and would not take place until 2024 due to language in the current Pac-12 media contracts, but all indications are this is the future for the Trojans and Bruins.

So, good-bye Stanford, Cal and Oregon. Hello Michigan, Ohio State and … Rutgers?

It all seems unnatural and bizarre at first glance. Travel across the country to New Jersey and Maryland for conference games. Playing the Buckeyes and Wolverines not in the Rose Bowl Game but at 10 o’clock on a Saturday morning at the Coliseum.

But this is the direction that college athletics, and specifically college football, is headed, and USC and UCLA are making the savvy, proactive decision in this ever-shifting landscape.

Conference realignment has been the rule in college athletics for the past decade. But last year’s bombshell that Texas and Oklahoma were leaving the Big 12 for the SEC was the first indication that the next stage of realignment was upon us: The move from a Power Five to two mega-conferences that feature all the premiere programs in the country.

Anyone left out of these conferences, sorry, better luck never.

So USC and UCLA looked to secure their future rather than wait for the landscape to shift around them. By all reports, it was the two Los Angeles schools that initiated conversations with the Big Ten about the move. The reasons why are not hard to guess.

Beyond the competitive security that joining the Big Ten provides, there are the financials to consider. The Pac-12 was left far behind the SEC, Big Ten and ACC in media rights deals in the last round of negotiations. Millions were left on the table for all Pac-12 member schools.

The Big Ten, though, has already been ahead of the Pac when it comes to media rights. Now, add two schools from the second-largest media market in the country, and the Big Ten gets a major boost in its ongoing negotiations for a new deal.

By some estimates, the Big Ten could make as much as $80 million annually per school, tens of millions more than any conference other than the SEC. That makes this decision a no-brainer for USC and UCLA.

Perhaps the most painful part to those who are still clinging to the college football of old, with regional rivalries and traditions. After the 2023 season, who knows when the next time USC plays its old rival Stanford? UCLA and Cal, both members of the UC system, are headed for a divorce.

New rivalries in the Big Ten will surely form. An annual series between UCLA and Indiana in men’s basketball is a blue-blood dream, as are annual games between USC and Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State in football. Still, it all feels weird to say out loud right now, doesn’t it?

But for USC and UCLA, it was either be proactive or be left holding the bag. That’s the situation that Oregon finds itself in now, along with the rest of the Pac-12, or should we say, the Pac-10 again.

The path forward for commissioner George Kliavkoff, who on Friday will celebrate his one-year anniversary with the conference, is uncertain at best. Can you add schools like San Diego State and Boise State to stop the bleeding? Do you try to merge with another conference — say, the Big 12 — and form your own super league?

Who knows if the Big 12 would even be interested after it made a similar offer to the Pac-12 last year that was rebuffed. Perhaps it’s more likely to see Oregon, Washington and others try to jump ship for other conferences. Maybe some join the L.A. schools in the Big Ten.

That’s the reality now in college athletics. USC and UCLA just decided to get out in front of it.