I’ll be honest right now, the SEC & Big 10 are the safest and most powerful conferences in CFB. When one of them decided to expand again and take Notre Dame, USC, Oregon, or another “blue blood” etc, the conferences will scramble to poach what’s left and be one of the 3 in the “Big Three” conferences of College Football.
Whether that is the new Big 12, Depleted PAC 12, or corpse of an ACC with its leftovers, will be interesting. And I hope we position ourselves well to be in that 3rd conference.
I really, really don’t think the B1G is gonna poach the Pac-12. The only school that makes sense for them is ND, and if they get rid of divisions they can just go to 15. Even USC would be a middle of the road B1G team in terms of attendance, and that would only get worse with a move that sees them playing every conference road game two timezones away. After the novelty from the first couple years wears off, who exactly is tuning in for USC @ Purdue or Northwestern?
IF the media starts to market two top tier conferences (B1G & SEC) and if those top two produce an ever increasing gap in revenue + top talent + exposure, do you think USC is perfectly fine being in a tweener conference that is not considered a big boy college football conference when they have an open invitation to be in that party?
Very likely yes, simply because USC has always been content to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond.
The PAC-12 has been the weakest football conference of the P5 for a long time now.
Hasn’t made USC interested in leaving though. They are a West Coast school through and through. Their only rival that isn’t on the West Coast is ND. Travel beyond the Mountain Time Zone for non-revenue sports wouldn’t make good fiscal sense. And I doubt many of their fans have any interest in watching them play Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, Rutgers, or Maryland every year.
The B1G and SEC are already being built up as the two “big boy” conferences. Hasn’t made USC interested in leaving.
They’d rather be the Big Boy in a not so big boy conference, which they always have been. They are perfectly content with that lot in life. Their athletic department, unlike almost any other in the country, is FULLY endowed. They don’t need B1G or SEC money, as a result, and given their huge number of rich boosters, they can NIL enough top recruits to always be a blue blood. They aren’t called the “University of Spoiled Children” (USC) for nothing you know!
Don’t assume that USC thinks the way that the B1G or SEC do. I got accepted to USC for undergrad and nearly went there. They don’t think anything like the B1G or SEC. I have a Master’s degree from a B1G school (Illinois). Trust me. USC isn’t the B1G’s cup of tea. They look for AAU state flagships (or ND) that are located either within, or immediately adjacent to their existing geographical footprint.
DON’T put money on them expanding any other way.
As for the SEC adding PAC-12…yeah right! Don’t put money on that either.
Again…for the one millionth time if the B1G goes to 24 by absorbing the value PAC brands, they can break up into 2 12 team halves (East and West) with limited crossover.
They can keep non varsity sports very regional.
Ive already outlined how this could be done in multiple threads.
If USC wants this to happen- IT WILL…no way are they are going to be happy in a tweener conference.
This is absolutely silly talk. Under the current scheduling rules, there’s absolutely no way to make a 24-team conference work even with zero crossover, and even if there were, there aren’t enough “value” brands in the Pac to keep the West Coast teams over there for most of the season. The B1G isn’t going to dilute their revenue just to spite the Pac-12 as an entity.
That’s not true at all. Texas, prior to moving to the SEC, was largely stranded in a conference where two of their three biggest historical rivals has abandoned them. They’re functionally leaving nothing they care about behind in the XII – Tech and TCU and Baylor aren’t and will never be A&M and Arkansas.
USC cares about playing Notre Dame, UCLA, and Stanford. None of those are in the B1G as of right now, and two of the three will almost certainly never be. They’ve flirted with the idea of independence, but that would be largely pointless for them since they’d basically be playing the same schedule they do now. If they want to retain basically any of their historical rivals that aren’t ND, they’re glued to the Pac.
We will make lots more money then we’ve ever made. If we use it wisely, we will compete. Good coaching hires over time, keep facilities on par with conference mates. That’s enough money.
I see the B1G poaching the ACC more than I do them poaching the PAC. The PAC is just in that weird area of being so far away from the other power conferences (less weird in the future since BYU is in the BIG 12) that unless they go the pro route of coast-to-coast play, instead of regional, I just don’t seem them poaching that conference.
IMHO when the Big 10 let that laughing stock Rutgers in all that BS about academics went right out the window. After that TV MONEY and TV Markets are what it’s all about. Do you think the SEC let the farmers, the cows and boomer sooner in because the like Texas and Oklahoma? They like the Texas/Oklahoma TV market just like The Big 10 liked the NY/ New Jersey TV market. IMHO the Big 10 should have come after Houston right after the old SWC busted up. UH should immediately achieve AAU status just in case…