On Thursday, The Big Ten conference announced it will be adding the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles as conference members effective August 2, 2024, with competition to begin in all sports the 2024-25 academic year. The Big Ten, which has consisted of fourteen schools since 2014, was once a conference that was made up of like-minded midwestern schools. Now, it spans coast to coast and if reports are true, could be looking to expand further. While yesterday’s news might annoy you for a few minutes before you scroll to the next story on your social media feed, the precedent that the Big Ten set forth will have significant repercussions on college athletics that could ultimately do more harm than good.
USC and UCLA joining the Big Ten was yet another move in the everchanging college athletic conference landscape. Just last July, Texas and Oklahoma joined the SEC. We also went through a wave of major realignment in the early 2010s, the biggest moves being Texas A&M and Missouri leaving the Big 12 to join the SEC in 2012, the formation of the entirely new American Athletic Conference in 2013 and Maryland and Rutgers joining the Big Ten in 2014. At that point, it was clear that this was no longer your parents' college sports landscape. Conference leaders were beginning to view their leagues more as a Fortune 500 business rather than an opportunity to provide college athletes the chance to compete at the highest level, while also pursuing a degree at an accredited institution.
Rutgers joining the Big Ten made zero sense athletically and was nothing but a clear decision by the Big Ten to tap into the New York market. A severe overestimation from the conference, by the way, as New Yorkers really do not care about college football as much as the conference may have expected. Believe it or not, New Yorkers have better things to do with their Saturday than sit in front of a TV for 4 hours and watch Rutgers lose by 30+ points to Wisconsin, Northwestern or pretty much any conference foe. The same goes for LA natives, as attendance has struggled at both USC and UCLA in recent years. College football is just not ingrained in New England or Californian culture the way it is in the midwest and south.
All that college sports fans love about college athletics is slowly being ripped away from us: the regionality, the amateurism, the pageantry, the rivalries, the tradition. Athletes are signing six and seven-figure NIL deals, conferences are being completely redesigned, players are transferring schools free agency style, classic matchups are taking decade-long hiatuses.
As a Michigan fan, there is nothing better than waking up on a crisp fall Saturday morning and walking down the hill to the Big House with 110,000+ people to watch the Wolverines clash with a Big Ten foe like Wisconsin or Penn State. That excitement is only intensified on mornings of huge rivalry games, like Ohio State or Michigan State. You know what to expect with these matchups: 60 minutes of smash-mouth, physical play – characteristics often associated with Big Ten football (should we start calling it the conference formerly known as the Big Ten?) These are matchups that you spend 364 days anticipating, analyzing, stressing over and talking trash with co-workers and friends about. Michigan’s victory over Ohio State last November was one of the greatest moments of my entire life as a Michigan fan – a win that moved my Michigan alumnus mother to tears, will undoubtedly be my younger brother's best sports fan moment as a student at Michigan, and caused my 90-year old grandmother, another Michigan alumnus, to call me beaming with excitement. Quite frankly, college football fans live for those days. Will we feel the same way about UCLA coming to the Big House for a conference clash in mid-October? Or Michigan taking the 4.5-hour flight to LA to take on USC in the Coliseum? A Big Ten Championship Game in Los Angeles? What about USC going to Happy Valley and playing in a snowstorm in late November? Will midwest natives have USC or UCLA co-workers or friends to hold bragging rights over for 364 days? All that we have come to love and appreciate about college football is slowly slipping away.
Notice how the 23 other college sports have yet to even be mentioned in this article? Make no bones about it, the Big Ten adding USC and UCLA was solely a football-minded move and nothing else. Conferences stopped caring about the less popular sports years ago, if they ever did at all. Why? Because they do not make the conference money. With the exception of the NCAA Basketball tournament, these sports do not come with the same TV contracts with major networks, ad revenue, attendance and merchandise. And that is the true tragedy of conference realignment: it completely disregards the common college athlete and is about nothing but money, money, money and more money.
Conference realignment completely disregards the Freshman midfielder on the women’s lacrosse team. It ignores the Senior goalie on the soccer team that has played sporadically throughout his time in college and has not earned a penny from NIL. What about the sophomore bench player on USC’s baseball team that now has to take bi-weekly 4+ hour flights across three time zones just to sit and watch his team play a three-game series, all while juggling challenging coursework as he pursues a degree in finance? Managing coursework with morning lifts, afternoon practice and mandatory team meetings was challenging enough while competing in regionally focused conferences. With the increased travel requirements, being a college athlete is becoming more and more unsustainable. The common college athlete plays their sport for nothing but the love of the game. At what point is the commitment too much? At what point do they burn out, both physically and/or mentally? College athletic departments and conferences are supposed to help their student-athletes develop as athletes and students. Around 98% of student-athletes don’t go on to play professionally, it is the responsibility of these schools, conferences and the NCAA to help student-athletes pursue a career after sports, all while continuing to enjoy playing the sport they love. Conference realignment shows where conference and university leaders' intentions lie, and it does anything but benefit the common college athlete.
On top of an increased burden on student-athletes, the Big Ten’s realignment will bear a significant burden on the finances of less popular sports programs. It is already well documented that every sport outside of football (and sometimes basketball) loses money for college athletic departments. These schools use the money they earn from football to finance their other sports programs. The less popular sports are allotted significantly fewer scholarships than football, travel via bus instead of plane when possible, have worse accommodations on the road, often have lower-quality facilities, receive less gear; they are essentially given the short end of the stick. Now that Big Ten teams will have to travel across the country on a consistent basis, these less popular sports only become MORE expensive for athletic departments. More expensive flights, hotels, transportation upon arrival, and meals. With continued expansion expected, this will soon be the case for more colleges across the country. Division One athletic departments have already cut 77 sports at various colleges across the country from lost revenues due to COVID-19, how many more sports will be cut due to the increase in expenses from conference realignment? Will athletic departments be more willing to cut the cord on these less popular sports because they will be losing more money than they already are, while football will only be earning more?
College sports feel as if they have truly reached a breaking point. With conference realignment and the formation of a potential “super conference,” schools and athletes openly flaunting NIL deals, coaches reportedly needing to pay their players millions to keep their team afloat and players essentially enjoying a free agency period in the offseason, college sports are becoming more aligned with professional sports by the day. Sure, star college athletes got paid under the table long before NIL. It is the free agency aspect, choosing the school that will offer the strongest NIL contract, of it all that does not sit right with many fans. If college sports are essentially the “light” version of professional sports, why would we fans watch them? If all of what we love about college sports gets taken away from us, why would we watch? Is college football basically becoming a minor league system for the NFL, similar to the XFL or USFL? At some point, fans will lose interest.
I am not saying NIL is a bad thing, it is great that college athletes are finally able to profit off of their name and image. The vast majority of college athletes, however, will never receive a dime from NIL. Conference realignment only makes the lives of these athletes more stressful. They are not being offered thousands of dollars to transfer to another school. These overlooked athletes are the backbone of the NCAA, they play for nothing but the love of the game. Why have college sports become so popular over the course of the past 100+ years? Because the kids play for the love of the game. That has always been the fundamental difference between college and professional sports. The further these conferences stray from that, and the less discnerable college sports become from professional sports, the quicker fans will lose interest in college sports altogether.
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