Big Ten Expansion: Why Not UCLA, Cal?

TV controls college athletics to a harmful degree. Games are scheduled at inconvenient hours for student-athletes, fans, and university communities—but not for TV advertisers. With this essential logic in mind, I offer my quirky forecast for the Big Ten to add UCLA and Cal.

I’ll share my reasoning in a minute. First, here are my assumptions.

1.       Jim Delaney runs the conference, not university presidents.

2.       Jim Delaney covets TV markets.

3.       Jim Delaney—a product of my law school, UNC— understands the intrinsic value of outstanding public universities.

4.       Jim Delaney also understands the importance of cultural symmetry between schools as diverse as Rutgers and Nebraska, and their traditional Big Ten brethren.

5.       The Power 5 is a transition state that will become the Power 4 and eventually Power 3.

Here’s my reasoning for UCLA and Cal—not from my perspective, but my imagination of Jim Delaney’s perspective. Los Angeles (UCLA) is the #2 TV market in the U.S., and San Francisco (Cal) is the #6 TV market. With Rutgers, Delaney has a piece of the NY and Philly markets, rated #1 and #4. Chicago is #3. By acquiring these two schools, the Big Ten would have 5 out of 6 top TV markets (Dallas is #5).

Not only would these schools add tens of millions of TVs to the Big Ten gravy train—it would allow a TV window on Saturdays from noon Eastern time to midnight Pacific time. Can Delaney resist that?

Cal and UCLA are currently ranked #1 and #2 in the U.S. as public universities. Michigan is ranked #3. Illinois and Wisconsin are tied for #10, and so on.

What about travel and division imbalance? Those would be solvable in Delaney’s world. Move Illinois to the East. Add UCLA and Cal to the West. By present and historical measures, this Illini fan is sorry to say that this would dilute the East; adding UCLA and Cal would beef up the West (UCLA is having a down year, but compares to Nebraska). The result: more parity. 

Here is your lineup, reflecting current football standings:

East                                                                                        West

Michigan                                                                                Wisconsin

Penn State                                                                              Nebraska

OSU                                                                                       Iowa

Indiana                                                                                   Minnesota

Maryland                                                                               Northwestern

Illinois                                                                                   UCLA

Michigan State                                                                      Cal

Rutgers                                                                                  Purdue