Pac-12 gutted by its longtime partner in latest conference expansion

The most amazing aspect of the Big Ten bringing in UCLA and USC? Forget that the league now will literally stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Nope, it’s that the Big Ten raided its long-time Rose Bowl partner and gutted the Pac-12 in the process.

What was thought to be an unbreakable alliance (ahem) instead was smashed into millions of tiny pieces by the Big Ten’s expansion.

Now, the Big Ten’s footprint will consist of schools in five of the nine largest media markets: 1. New York with Rutgers; 2. Los Angeles with the new additions; 3. Chicago with Illinois and Northwestern (not to mention all the alums of other Big Ten schools in the area); 4. Philadelphia with Penn State; and 9. Washington, D.C., with Maryland. In addition, the No. 14 market is Minneapolis, the No. 15 market is Detroit and the No. 19 market is Cleveland. When you negotiate a TV deal – which the Big Ten is doing; indeed, the deal was supposed to be done by May (hmmm) – having teams associated with major markets means more money flowing in.

Part of every TV negotiation is that conferences realize that certain teams are the main reason for the networks’ largesse. In short, not every Power 5 school is equal when it comes to TV marketability. “You don’t realize how pedestrian the numbers are when the big schools aren’t involved,” a college athletics source told On3 last year. “ . . . When you say how about fill-in-the-blank team versus someone other than Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Auburn and LSU? The numbers fall off a cliff.”

When the SEC announced last year that Oklahoma and Texas were coming aboard, it added schools that will drive TV numbers. The Big Ten certainly has done that with USC, which is one of the biggest brands in college football. And it doesn’t hurt to add UCLA in that regard, either.

And this Big Ten expansion is like the SEC’s in another regard, too: These are top-of-the-food chain schools moving. Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby noted that last year about the SEC expansion, saying, “The others that have moved have typically been the Rutgers and Marylands that were down in the ranks.”

The pending departures of Oklahoma and Texas led the Big 12 to expand by four teams, with BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF coming aboard in the 2023-24 academic year. How does the Pac-12 respond? Does it try to stay together and raid either the Big 12 or Mountain West? Does the Big 12 now try to come after some of the Pac-12 “leftovers”?

It’s worth noting that Jon Wilner – who broke the news about UCLA and USC – tweeted that he was told the Big Ten wasn’t done. Does that mean it might try to add schools in its rough geographic area (think Notre Dame and some ACC schools – and maybe even an SEC school that has been in the league 10 years), or will it go back for more of the Pac-12? Also worth noting: There are some big media markets still in the Pac-12. San Francisco (Cal and Stanford) is sixth. Phoenix (Arizona State, as well as Arizona) is 11^th. Seattle (Washington) is 12^th. Denver (Colorado) is 16^th. Sacramento is 20^th, Portland 21^st and Salt Lake City 30^th.

And not that it matters, but as for the academic match, UCLA and USC fit nicely in the Big Ten. Both are members of the prestigious American Association of Universities, which has just 65 members in an organization that features public and private research universities “distinguished by the breadth and quality of their programs of research and graduate education.” All the Big Ten schools except Nebraska are AAU members. Among the Pac-12 leftovers, Arizona, Cal, Oregon, Stanford, Utah and Washington are AAU schools – and each is associated with a top-30 media market, too.