photo credit: Nick Woolard
The powerhouse of Midwestern collegiate sports otherwise known as the BIG Ten founded in 1896 and composed of eight different football teams who have hoisted the NCAA Football National Championship is in for a dramatic change in 2024.This change will have a ripple effect on the entirety of college athletics,
In the past two years University of Southern California, University of California Los Angeles, Washington and University of Oregon have all announced their departure from the PAC-12 conference for transition to the BIG Ten.
The BIG Ten which at its conception started with Midwestern based schools still in today like Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Purdue and more, has now expanded across America to the Pacific region. And this rebranching of regional conferences is not exclusive to the Big Ten. The SEC is adding soon to be former Big-12 members Oklahoma and Texas university starting in 2024, according to bleachereport.com.
This the worst thing to ever happen to college sports, and fans who say they want this will regret that thought within five years. There will be no conference loyalty and the best of the best will be in a single division soon enough. The big teams will only play the big teams and the small teams will only play the small teams. This reminds me of the rumored super league in soccer a few years back that was set to pair europes best teams in a single league, while the smaller clubs were left to rot. Luckily, Europe’s fans were quick to reject and protest that idea.
While the Big Ten and SEC are thriving off the additions of their new schools, conferences like the Pac-12, which have lost four schools, might soon be non-existent. Due to the exit of the PAC-12s biggest schools, this sent a panic through the rest of the division. As of today there is now only Washington State and Oregon State. The PAC-12 which stood for over a century is now the PAC-2.
The creation of the powerhouse that is the transcontinental Big Ten has other issues besides deflating fellow conferences like the PAC-12 though. Student athletes of Washington and Rutgers will now have to travel almost 3000 miles to play each other and vice versa. This could be very tiring and stressful for student athletes having to travel across the country on a weekday to play in a sporting event and potentially missing significant class time.
Many Big Ten fall sports have collegiate events falling on weekdays, soccer included in that category. The last four of the last five Rutgers matches were played on weekdays. However, those matches were around the state of New Jersey which Rutgers also resides in. When the addition of west coast schools goes through next year, how many classes will players be missing when they have to leave a day early to fly into a state and then take a day to fly back, potentially missing two of the five weekday classes.
The addition of these Western schools not only hurts student athletes in the classroom, but also from a fan’s perspective there is just no tradition in play. Ohio State has played both Washington and University of California Los Angeles under 10 times in its football history. The teams are two polar opposites on the map of college football and have no storied rivalry. The same can be said for other schools. No Oregon fan is really itching for their team to play the University of Maryland so they can get the ultimate bragging rights.
Whether you’re a player or a diehard fan of a team in the division, the Big Ten landscape will never be the same again. With money corrupting the NCAA and with the additions of these four new schools we are seeing the death of a century old conference in favor of a BIG Ten/ SEC domination all in favor of the dollar.
