Conference realignment in college sports has been going on since 1984, when the Supreme Court invalidated the NCAA’s national television contract for football.
The conference juggling has gone through ebbs and flows in the years since, from small schools bumping up to bigger leagues to power programs switching to other major conferences.
The latest move, UCLA and the University of Southern California bolting the Pac-12 for the Big Ten, could be part of a tectonic shift. Not just because of the marquee schools involved, but because it happened at a time when the NCAA is looking to take a more decentralized approach to governing college athletics, handing more power to schools and conferences.
“You might think this is more seismic because it’s involving wealthier schools – and arguably it is – but also it’s seismic because of the underpinnings of the system, the foundations of the system, are being challenged at a time when the financial structure is exploding,” Smith College economics professor Andrew Zimbalist said Friday. “It may have larger ramifications, but it is a process that’s been ongoing.”
The decisions by UCLA and USC to join the Big Ten in 2024 come roughly a year after Oklahoma and Texas announced they were leaving the Big 12 for the Southeastern Conference, a move that will take place by July 2025.