Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren on Tuesday morning made his first public comments since the conference approved the admission of USC and UCLA starting in 2024, putting an end to the schools’ near-century-old relationship with what’s now the Pac-12.
Here are five takeaways from Warren’s 45-minute news conference to kick off Big Ten football media days in Indianapolis:
USC and UCLA will be full members
The Times’ UCLA beat reporter Ben Bolch was on the ground at Lucas Oil Stadium and asked Warren whether USC and UCLA would join as full members — meaning that they would receive the same revenue distribution as the current 14 members.
“USC and UCLA will come in as full members,” Warren said. “They bring a lot of value to our relationship, a lot of panache to our relationship. We look forward to welcoming them to the Big Ten family in 2024.”
“Panache” was quite the word choice. Whatever it is that USC and UCLA and the Los Angeles market bring the Midwestern-based, now-national Big Ten, it is widely assumed that their addition to the league will push the Big Ten’s next media rights package well past $1 billion.
And the vow from Warren that USC and UCLA will be receiving the same amount as Michigan and Ohio State from day one is welcome news for the Trojans and Bruins, who will want to quickly make up ground on their new conference peers in the college sports’ arms race.
Warren has been eyeing USC, UCLA since 2019
Warren said that he has been evaluating expansion options since the day he interviewed for the role of Big Ten commissioner, which he assumed in September 2019, taking over from longtime leader Jim Delany.
USC and UCLA, he said, were always attractive to him as targets.
“We had to be forward thinking about what we need to do,” Warren said. “You look at some of the alumni from USC, the Steven Spielbergs, at UCLA, Jackie Robinson, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Stan Smith at USC, you think of all the different positive, powerful alumni who have a diverse background. …
“In 2019, I studied every one of the universities across the country, and one of the things that jumped out about USC and UCLA is the largest section of Big Ten alumni other than in the Midwest is in Los Angeles.”
Warren wants to remain bold
Warren…