Thursday’s news of USC and UCLA joining the Big Ten Conference as early as 2024 stunned the college sports world.
The prospect of two elite athletic programs teaming up with the nation’s most powerful Power Five conference might be the most anticipated merger since Joe Walsh joined the Eagles.
Did the Eagles really need Walsh to crank out hit after hit?
No, but they immediately turned out the granddaddy of all classic rock albums, “Hotel California,” and became better than ever with Walsh.
Ditto the Big Ten, which didn’t need USC or UCLA to prove its worth in the world of college sports but became exponentially greater with both schools as members.
What it means for the college football landscape will be the subject of intense speculation the next several weeks and months leading into September.
The idea of two super-conferences — the Big Ten and SEC — dominating the sport and leading to the extinction or irrelevance of the remaining three power conferences seems to be the most likely outcome, at least according to experts who somehow missed out on the biggest story of the year until it actually happened.
Oklahoma and Texas ignited the gold rush last year when the two most prominent Big 12 schools announced their decision to bolt to the SEC. Surely we haven’t seen the last “name” school eschewing tradition to join one of the super conferences and share the TV booty. And when that happens, the poor get poorer.
But who knows?
Maybe the Big 12, ACC and Pac-12 can survive as minor conferences. There certainly are enough networks and streaming services for everyone to get a share of the TV pie, even if it’s a sliver compared with the wheelbarrows full of cash the Big Ten and SEC will be raking in under their current and future contracts.
One of the biggest questions is what happens with Notre Dame, the only college football program that doesn’t need to share with the others because it’s freaking Notre Dame.
The Irish never needed to join a conference because NBC airs all of their home games in a deal that runs through 2025. They’ve had a national following for more than a century and have been doing just fine as an independent, making it to the College Football Playoff without having to win a conference title.
But according to Notre Dame’s agreement with the ACC, the Irish are obligated to join the conference if they decide to give up their independent status before 2036. That’s a long way from now, especially with the rapid alteration of the college sports landscape.
And if Clemson, Miami and another team bolt the ACC for the SEC, as some have predicted, the future of the conference would be in severe jeopardy.
The obvious choice for Notre Dame would be the Big Ten — the Irish would fit perfectly with the Ohio States, Michigans and USCs of the college football world. This has been discussed since Nebraska and Penn State joined the Big Ten, but the Irish didn’t need the Big Ten and kept the status quo.
Times change, and Notre Dame soon might have no choice but to join a conference. But why would the SEC let Notre Dame get away without making an offer that its president, Rev. John Jenkins, couldn’t refuse? If USC and UCLA are good fits for the Big Ten, why wouldn’t Notre Dame be comfortable in the SEC?
Perhaps coach Marcus Freeman could even affect a Southern accent like his predecessor, the chameleon-like Brian Kelly, who took LSU’s money and suddenly began sounding like he was shucking crawdads on the bayou. A Notre Dame schedule with games against LSU, Alabama and Georgia every season would be just as appetizing as a Big Ten schedule, and the SEC’s dominance proves it’s by far the best football conference.
While we await the fallout from the USC and UCLA exodus, we also mourn the loss of the Rose Bowl as the preeminent New Year’s Day bowl game. The tradition already took a hit when they played the 2021 Rose Bowl at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. No one seemed to blink when the “granddady of ‘em all” wasn’t played in Pasadena, Calif., so maybe no one will mind if USC were to play Washington State of the revamped Pac-6 Conference in the 2025 Rose Bowl.
College football can survive anything, no matter the unending competition for the biggest haul from universities that were built to provide education for students rather than entertainment for the masses. When it comes down to it, the game-day experience — including the marching bands, cheerleaders, fight songs, stadiums, age-old rivalries and newer traditions such as the “Jump Around” singalong in Madison, Wis. — make every fall Saturday a day to look forward to.
Changes always have been part of the game and always will be.
In the words of the House of Pain anthem performed at every Wisconsin game: “Get used to one style and yo and I might switch.”
Jump around, America. Jump around.
