Tony Petitti: Oregon, Washington 'really wanted to be in the Big Ten'

When Tony Petitti took the podium at Big Ten Media Days for the first time as commissioner, he made it clear the league wasn’t focusing on further expansion. Instead, he said the focus was on integrating USC and UCLA in 2024 following the move made one year earlier.

Two weeks later, those plans changed as the Big Ten announced Oregon and Washington would be joining the conference in 2024, as well. That will take the league to 18 teams and assuredly change the plans for the division-less schedule unveiled in June.

One thing’s for sure. In Oregon and Washington, the Big Ten got two teams that wanted to be in the league.

“Oregon and Washington, they had, real intent; they were working hard to make it an option for them,” Petitti told ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg. “They really wanted to be in the Big Ten. We felt that throughout the whole process.”

What’s next for the Big Ten?

Petitti told Rittenberg the Big Ten isn’t looking to expand past the additions of Oregon and Washington. That means the next question for the league is how to adjust the schedule.

In June, the Big Ten announced its Flex Protect Plus scheduling model, which was meant to protect certain rivalries while also creating a rotation of sorts for future schedules. The league released the list of opponents in a special on Big Ten Network, but the schedule will likely change dramatically in light of the two new additions.

Chief operating officer Kerry Kenny told Rittenberg the plan is still to do away with divisions. As for the schedule itself, it sounds like it could be coming soon — maybe a matter of “days, if not weeks.”

“We’re making sure that we don’t have outliers in terms of the hardest schedule or the easiest schedule for any of our teams, and working through how to balance the competitive tiers,” Kenny said. “You’re going to see a lot of what people seemingly liked with the Flex Protect Plus. We’re going through different options of what that could look like to see how we balance not just the travel component of our Eastern and Central time zone schools but also the frequency of how we can get everybody to play both at those four [West Coast] schools.”

A look at how the Pac-12 crumbled so quickly

Oregon and Washington’s departures came about as the Pac-12 started to fall apart. Colorado had already announced its departure for the Big 12, doing so after the first day of Big Ten Media Days wrapped up. Then, the Pac-12’s long-awaited media deal underwhelmed, and a call to sign a grant of rights didn’t go as planned after the two schools no-showed.

It became clear they were on their way out. Shortly after that news broke, the Big 12 announced the additions of Arizona, Arizona State and Utah in what commissioner Brett Yormark called a “dream scenario.”

Just like that, in the span of just a few days, the Pac-12 — well, the Pac-9 at the time — was down to four. It wouldn’t stay that way, though. Cal and Stanford later announced their departures for the ACC, along with SMU, leaving Oregon State and Washington State to figure out what’s next.

That includes a lawsuit as the two schools continue to work through the next steps for the Pac-12, which is now effectively the Pac-2.