The Big Ten will keep its divisions for the 2023 season before UCLA and USC join the conference in 2024, The Athletic’s Scott Dochterman reports.
Big Ten to keep divisions in 2023 before reconfiguring when USC, UCLA arrive in 2024: Sourceshttps://t.co/rT8YIXFszl
— Scott Dochterman (@ScottDochterman) October 24, 2022
Whether people like it or not, the Big Ten East and Big Ten West will stay as they are for another football season.
Dochterman wrote that, “the Big Ten is planning to run it back one more time with the East-West divisions and then configure a new model when USC and UCLA arrive in 2024, multiple sources confirmed to The Athletic on Monday.”
He also wrote that the Big Ten plans to reveal its 2023 conference schedule this week and that there was “strong consideration” to do way with divisions next season, but “there were too many issues to implement.”
“Among the most discussed issues for Big Ten administrators and school officials include the desire to unveil one new system for USC and UCLA rather than in consecutive years, the number of protected games and television concerns,” Dochterman wrote.
The college football world got a bombshell this summer when it found out that California’s two most prominent athletic programs were coming to the Big Ten. Naturally, the conference’s commissioner, Kevin Warren, has addressed the topic in the months since.
Warren recently spoke about it at the Big Ten’s Basketball Media Days earlier this month, saying that the conference has come up with “can’t-miss priorities.”
”One of those can’t miss priorities,” Warren said, “is to make sure that we flawlessly integrate our new media partners. “But the other big one is to make sure that we flawlessly integrate USC and UCLA into the Big Ten Conference. In the climate that we’re in right now in college athletics, you also always have to be mindful of expansion.”
