In Reply to: About tne move to the Big Ten for money posted by mh on April 02, 2026 at 15:13:44
UCLA joining the Big Ten is a Pac-12 leadership failure story more than anything. The logistical absurdity of West Coast teams flying to New Jersey, Ohio, and Michigan for conference games is the visible symptom of a conference that was mismanaged into collapse.
The Pac-12 should have been one of the most stable and powerful conferences in college athletics. It had:
Major media markets: Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Phoenix, Denver
Elite academic institutions: UCLA, USC, Stanford, Cal, Washington
Strong Olympic sports programs
Historic football brands (USC, Washington, Oregon, UCLA)
West Coast recruiting footprint
Natural geographic cohesion
There was no structural reason for the conference to fail. The SEC made sense geographically. The Big Ten made sense geographically. The Pac-12 should have been the western equivalent - stable, prestigious, and permanent.
Instead, administrative decisions slowly destroyed the conference. Major administrative failures include:
1. The Pac-12 Network disaster - the conference chose to fully own the Pac-12 Network rather than partner with ESPN or Fox like the Big Ten Network and SEC Network. This resulted in limited distribution, lower revenue, poor visibility for games, schools making far less money than Big Ten and SEC schools. This single decision likely cost the conference hundreds of millions of dollars and created the revenue gap that eventually caused schools to leave.
2. Failure to expand when expansion was available. The Pac-12 had opportunities to add: Texas, Oklahoma, Texas Tech, Oklahoma State, Kansas, BYU, TCU, Houston. Instead, leadership stood still while the Big Ten and SEC aggressively expanded.
The Big Ten added Nebraska, Rutgers, Maryland, USC, UCLA, Oregon, Washington.
The SEC added Texas and Oklahoma.
The Pac-12 added Colorado and Utah and then stopped.
3. Terrible media rights negotiations - when the conference’s media deal expired, leadership overestimated the conference’s value and failed to secure a stable TV deal. Schools were left with uncertainty while the Big Ten and SEC locked in massive long-term contracts.
At that point, USC and UCLA leaving was inevitable - they could not afford to stay in a conference making half the revenue of the Big Ten.
I don't think UCLA joining the Big 10 is logistically sustainable and was ever perceived as a permanent or even long-term solution. I expect at some point in the future (10 years? 20 years?) that there will be an attempt to revitalize a West Coast-centered power conference, built to be financially viable from day 1.