“So, what are your thoughts on USC and UCLA joining the Big Ten?”

The 2024 NCAA football season was just weeks away when Colleen McLean Calver posed this question to the class Facebook group, as reports in the sporting news reminded us that USC and UCLA would be leaving the Pac-12 conference to join the Big Ten. And, oh yes, Oregon and Washington were coming, too. So, let’s see now….the Big “Ten” has eighteen member schools?

The response from the group was immediate and not too kind to the Big Ten or college football in general. JoAnn King Okey asked archly “You mean the Big 25?” Joe Steinbock said, well, “If Maryland can do it anybody can.” Shaya Gardner-Hayum said what many of us were thinking: “It hasn't been the Big Ten in years. NO surprises here!”

Sara Stubbins was succinct: “Stupid.” She asked the question we’ve been asking since 2014 when Maryland and Rutgers joined the Big Ten. “What happened to just having teams from the ‘Midwest’?” Cherie Olsen Major backed up that thought: driving to an away game will be virtually impossible with the schools located coast to coast. As she put it, “Not happy. Too far away for traveling to games. Students are forgotten.”

It was pretty clear that we all know what this is about: Money. Or as Dale Withers Peck put it, “Just like everything else. Mammon. The word ‘tradition’ has been tied and gagged.” Bill Brooks added, “Amateur athletics? Student athletes? Gone!” Shirley Bauer Varney agreed: “My dad is rolling in his grave along with Bo!”

Fans in the conferences the teams are leaving aren’t all thrilled, either. George Henry, who lives in northern California, wrote, “Many of my friends here on the Left Coast who went to USC or UCLA are livid. Pac-12 is going to take a financial hit and they don't think that we Midwesterners are all that cultured. (George noted, “Does not apply to UofM or Ann Arbor.” Whew!)

But not everyone had a negative reaction. Mike Keebler, who lives in California, said “Welcome to the left coast. Perhaps our surfers and golfers will take a Saturday to watch a real sport.” He’s planning to come back to Ann Arbor for the USC game on September 21. “I want to return and be able to say to my USC friends how seriously The Big Ten takes college football. There is no option to go surfing instead of going to the football game.”

We were amused to read a piece in the Associated Press saying that “USC Trojans coaches asked their players to add more body mass this season because the fleeter, high-scoring Pac-12 teams would be squaring off with more physical teams in the Big Ten.” As most everyone should know, the wolverine is a ferocious animal—in the wild or on the gridiron. This should be an interesting 2024 season.

University of Michigan game at the Big House