Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith and university president Kristina M. Johnson offered insight Friday into the meetings that rapidly saw UCLA and USC accepted into the Big Ten Conference beginning in 2024.
The conference received formal applications from the two soon-to-be former Pac-12 programs Thursday morning, Smith said. Conference athletic directors and the Council of Presidents and Chancellors then met to discuss expansion on a conference call made by commissioner Kevin Warren, and Smith said the reason boiled down to a simple area.
“At the end of the day, we needed to look at what's best for our 14 schools and the student-athletes we serve in our institutions,” Smith said.
Smith said the Big Ten’s expansion didn’t come in response to other conferences, like the SEC, doing similarly.
Oklahoma and Texas are set to depart the Big 12 for the SEC in 2025, a move decided July 29, 2021. The Big 12 will see the additions of UCF, Cincinnati and Houston from the American Athletic Conference sooner on July 1, 2023, and Smith said the Big Ten’s expansion is unrelated.
Smith said UCLA and USC’s additions “sets us up” for adaptability toward a potential College Football Playoff expansion and “aligns us more” with the SEC.
“It had nothing to do with Texas and Oklahoma or us setting up mega-conferences for the future. It was about what did the Big Ten need?” Smith said. “Our marketing and media rights opportunities, along with the great relationship that we have with two institutions that culturally fit us, was just too good to pass up, so it was more about those things than it was about trying to compare to the SEC.”
The Alliance, brought together in August 2021, was made between the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 to collaborate on the future of college athletics.
In less than one year, two programs from one conference involved in The Alliance jumped to another, raising speculation around the level of trust between the conferences.
Smith said The Alliance “still exists” and cooperative relationships are maintained, though. He said volatility surrounds a number of issues at the forefront of college athletics, and time will only help.
“The fallout from this move is still fresh, and so what happens between now and the end of next week and the end of July will help determine that,” Smith said. “But at this point in time, it's hard for me to project that trust issue.”
With UCLA and USC joining the Big Ten in 2024, the two programs not only bring new competitive opportunities but academic prowess as well, Johnson said.
Networking is an area Johnson said she wants to take advantage of throughout expansion ventures. She said she respects the academic strength of the Big Ten, and adding two Los Angeles-based programs with their competitive and scholastic resources is “really important” when remembering expansion impacts more than just the playing field.
“I'm not sure if people appreciate it, but the Big Ten is a powerhouse in engineering,” Johnson said. “You're adding two schools that are also outstanding in engineering, in law, in medicine, so the opportunities are huge for athletics but they're also huge for us as a university.”
