Talking season rolls on this week, as the Big Ten will host its media days event at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis on Tuesday and Wednesday. The event will see half the league’s coaches speak Tuesday and the other half Wednesday in an offseason rite of passage.
While each of the league’s 14 coaches will speak, the headliner will be commissioner Kevin Warren. The conference has made a lot of news in recent weeks with the additions of USC and UCLA, and this will be the first time Warren has had to stand in front of a large room of reporters to answer questions about it. Trust me, he’ll be asked plenty of them.
In fact, everybody in attendance will be asked many questions, so let’s look at the most pressing ones.
The addition of USC, UCLA
Odds are the two most discussed schools at Big Ten Media Days will be the two schools that aren’t scheduled to officially join the conference for another couple of seasons. USC and UCLA made the biggest waves of the offseason when they announced they were leaving the Pac-12 to join the Big Ten, a move seen by many as a reaction to the SEC adding Oklahoma and Texas last year. It’s also seen as just another domino falling in a chain of events that will lead to two super leagues forming, with the Big Ten and SEC further separating themselves from their college football brethren.
How, exactly, is this going to work? Will USC and UCLA bring all their other sports to the Big Ten with them, and if so, what are the conference’s plans for scheduling? Is it financially feasible for the Olympic sports programs of both California schools to consistently travel at least 1,500 miles to face conference opponents, or to ask the teams at current Big Ten schools to make the same trips west?
Does any of that matter when factoring in how much money USC and UCLA could add to the conference’s television deal? That’s something else for which Warren will likely have answers prepped. The Big Ten reportedly had its new television deal in place before media days, but the addition of USC and UCLA changed the calculus. What does the future of the conference’s media rights look like? Can we expect Big Ten schools to start bringing in nearly $100 million per year from television rights alone and could that be shared with players as an advocacy group has proposed?
Further expansion
Are USC and UCLA the end, or does the Big Ten plan to expand further? Their additions…
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