Well That Escalated Quickly: USC and UCLA Approved To Join Big Ten

Noah Dunlap
2 min readAug 31, 2022
Photo courtesy of SI.com

In a move that has shocked virtually everyone, and happened in a hurry, USC and UCLA have been approved and are now set to join the Big Ten Conference starting in 2024, according to Pete Thamel at ESPN.

When we woke up on this Thursday morning, it didn’t seem as if anyone thought this would get done in a day’s time, as no real talk had been out there surrounding this announcement prior to this morning, but here we are.

So where does that leave us?

Well for starters, college football, and nearly every other major sport out there, is going to look totally different than anything we’ve ever seen in the past. Instead of having the “Power 5” conferences, we’re now going to end up with no more than four “super-conferences”, and I think there’s a real likelihood that number ends up at three before all is said and done.

There’s no question that the Big Ten is going to eventually expand further, including the possibility of Washington and Oregon, before all is settled, and what this also means is that the SEC can no longer sit back and be content with Oklahoma and Texas joining in 2024 or 2025. So with that being the case, the SEC is going to look at certain ACC teams (Florida State, Miami, and Clemson, to name a few), while the Pac-12 is going to eventually fold…

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Noah Dunlap

Avid Sports Fan. Host of the “Noah’s Ark of Sports” podcast. Ole Miss '20