Colin Cowherd gives reasons why Big Ten benefits from USC, UCLA additions

Prominent national talk show host Colin Cowherd is all for the latest conference realignment in college athletics. Referring, of course, to USC and UCLA packing up and bidding goodbye to the Pac-12 to move over to the Big Ten. Cowherd was actually on vacation this past week as the news broke and realignment rumors spread like wildfire. But the Fox Sports veteran came out of hiding to record an episode of his podcast for The Volume while on his trip to address the madness sweeping across college sports.

Cowherd was bullish on the move from a Big Ten perspective. Sure, the travel may be inconvenient, but the conference is making a smart move expanding its footprint all the way out west to Los Angeles.

Here is what he had to say regarding the benefits for the Big Ten in adding USC and UCLA:

“Is it good for the Big Ten? It’s GREAT for the Big Ten. USC and UCLA’s basketball programs. Los Angeles recruiting now available for Big Ten schools. Where the Big Ten basketball coaches can tell all the recruits ‘oh yeah, you LA guys, we’ll be back. Yeah, your parents can watch us. We’ll be coming there annually. It’s great for Big Ten basketball. It’s great for Big Ten football. It gives them the state of California. It is hard to pry great high school basketball and football players out of the south. They want to stay close to him. The SEC’s got great college football and college basketball. West Coast, not really.”

Clearly, he thinks the recruiting impact of poaching the LA schools will be immense. Giving the Big Ten programs access to players they normally would never have a shot at landing. However, it gets easier for current Big Ten teams to land a recruit from California if they can promise one or two trips back to Los Angeles every year.

Colin Cowherd finished by taking the 30,000-foot view of the situation:

“Let’s look big picture. Great for the sport. It’s also big picture great for the Big Ten. They add two LA schools.”

He mentioned earlier in the video that college football TV ratings have slightly declined in each of the last seven seasons. Noting that the sport needed a shot in the arm like this. USC and UCLA are intriguing programs boxed away in by far the weakest of the power conference programs across the two most important sports. Giving those universities a chance to play home games involving the Ohio State’s and Michigan’s of the world makes for more fascinating matchups than either conference had in the past.