USC and UCLA to Big Ten: What’s next for Pac-12, Notre Dame, ACC, Big 12 with realignment just getting started

The stealthiness of realignment these days is only surpassed by its audacity. USC and UCLA broke a 94-year relationship with the Pac-12 on Thursday despite serving as foundational rocks of West Coast athletics. And immediately, the conversation was less about the move itself — we’re kind of used to that sort of thing by now — and more about its implications. 

The 32 teams in the SEC and Big Ten now control most of the money, resources, rules and airways. (Ask the charter companies that will be hauling USC and UCLA athletes 3,000 miles to New Jersey for games against Rutgers.) The collection of brands in those two leagues is so thick right now, it could legitimately stage its own playoff.

If Cincinnati goes undefeated again, will the only entity calling the shots (television) care if the Bearcats are left out of the College Football Playoff? Of course not. And forget about needing a unanimous vote for CFP expansion in 2026. The SEC and Big Ten are calling the shots there, too.

This is consolidation on a seismic scale. It’s the Big Ten’s answer to the SEC adding Texas and Oklahoma less than a year ago.

It has also created the last desperate chance for other programs to grab the gold-plated brass ring and link up with the two superconferences set to rule the (college sports) world. (Talking to you, Clemson, Florida State, Miami and Notre Dame.)

Sadly, we have gone from #Pac12AfterDark to, perhaps, #Pac12GoingDark.

Yes, that’s in play, too. The last major conference to disintegrate was the Big East in 2013. This is different. This is major college football west of the Rockies. This is a Power Five league … or what used to be a Power Five league.

It’s a Power Two now. Get used to it.

Also, “The Grandaddy of Them All” is showing its age. The prestige of the Rose Bowl is suddenly on life support.

Call it karma, synergy or irony: Former Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott’s contract expired Thursday, the same day his old league began falling apart.

This was supposed to take years, this reshaping of major-college football. Heck, it took 10 years between the upheaval of 2010-11 to the announcement that Texas and Oklahoma were headed to the SEC.

But now, less than a year after that shocker, USC and UCLA to the Big Ten took less than a day. Only hours after the migration of the Trojans and Bruins broke, they had formally applied for Big Ten membership. Shortly thereafter, the Big…