Mick Cronin rips college athletics after travel to Washington: 'We've sold our soul to television'

The UCLA Bruins are one of four new teams in the Big Ten this year and, over the course of the season, they’re doing their best to learn how to handle the travel in their new conference. For head coach Mick Cronin, there are even challenges that come with traveling to a place like Washington.

Following the Bruins’ win over the Huskies on Friday, Cronin shared some thoughts on the travel his team is trying to manage. More than anything, there is frustration that these new challenges are tied to what he sees as selling their souls to television.

“All I know is we’re at SC Monday, correct? So, we’ve got to get home,” Mick Cronin said. “We’re going to get home at two in the morning, three in the morning. We should’ve just had this game at midnight. I mean, when you sell your soul to television, that’s just the way it is. That’s college sports. We’ve sold our soul to television.”

UCLA had previously been in the Pac-12. However, amid negotiations on a new media deal, the conference struggled to find a deal, and that led to instability. When teams started jumping ship to other power conferences, that instability grew until 10 teams had found a new conference to play in, often with strange geographic ties. Now, the Bruins are in a conference that spans from Seattle to Los Angeles to New Jersey.

In the upcoming weeks, UCLA will have some luck by being home more consistently. Three of their next four games are at home and the road game is against cross-town rival USC. Even that game, however, Cronin sees how the schedule breaks better for the Trojans than them.

“So, we’ll get home in the middle of the night, get some rest, and prepare as best can to play a team that played on Wednesday. Probably took Thursday off and is focused on us while we’re up here. So, there’s a lot of inequities in this thing. I’m sure at some point later in the year, it’ll go our way. I haven’t found that yet, but I’m hoping. You would think law of averages,” Cronin said. “But great win for us.”

With the win, UCLA improved to 14-6 on the season and 5-4 in Big Ten play for the season. That conference record has the Bruins in a five-way tie for fifth in the conference in their first season in the Big Ten.