The biggest news in college sports this weekend and possibly all of sports surrounds the demise of the PAC-12, and Penn State coach James Franklin gave his thoughts on the matter.
Oregon and Washington and coming to the Big Ten in 2024, joining Penn State and 16 other teams.
Arizona, Arizona State and Utah are going to the Big 12 at the same time, joining Colorado.
This, of course, comes more than a year after UCLA and USC announced their plans to move to the Big Ten in 2024. So, starting next season, the Big Ten will be very big, with 18 teams. The Big 12 will be healthy with 16, the ACC will (presumably) have 15, and the PAC-12… will probably have nobody. The only teams that haven’t announced their plans to leave are Washington State, Oregon State, Cal and Stanford, all of which are likely to find new homes.
At Penn State’s annual Media Day Sunday, Aug. 6 at Beaver Stadium, Franklin was asked about the recent news by PennLive’s Johnny McGonigal.
Franklin didn’t have a lot of thoughts.
He’s focused on this year’s Penn State season, which could end up being one of the best in the program’s storied history.
But Franklin did say the news was “somewhat sad” in some ways.
“Not that these people are being added to our conference, because I think obviously there’s a lot of strategy that goes into that,” Franklin said. “But you know, I do think there’s some challenges that come along with it. It’s very different for most of the people in this room. It’s very different than the college football that we all grew up with, and not really college football, but college athletics, where it was pretty regional. I do think it’s a huge win for USC and UCLA from a travel perspective. I think it’s a huge win for them.”
Penn State was supposed to play USC at home in 2024. Now, everything is uncertain because of the two additions, and we’ll have to wait and see what develops.
