Face it, USC and UCLA belong in Big Ten after outgrowing Pac-12

By Bill Plaschke, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — Every football Saturday could feel like a Rose Bowl.

USC visits Michigan one week, Ohio State comes to UCLA the next week, are you kidding me?

Every basketball weekend could feel like March Madness.

Indiana and Michigan State play UCLA at packed Pauley Pavilion in the middle of February on national television, are you serious?

The move by USC and UCLA from the Pac-12 conference to the Big Ten, which was announced Thursday and will take place beginning in 2024, is a bold and brilliant one worthy of the city of champions.

Face it, USC had long since outgrown a decaying Pac-12 that had deteriorated into the home of late-night TV games, half-empty stadiums, and national irrelevance.

And face it, USC wasn’t going anywhere without UCLA.

The athletic departments of both schools are packing up and moving from what had become an increasingly isolated West Coast sandlot to a national playing field where the lights are brighter, the crowds are bigger, and the buzz is better.

Can you blame them? They just increased their market penetration from one corner of the country by adding a 1,500-mile swath from New Jersey to Nebraska. They just expanded their surroundings from a largely ignored 12-team league to a powerful 14-team group in some of the most visible markets in the country.

New York or Phoenix? Chicago or Denver? Philadelphia or Portland? The choices here gave them no choice.

One can understandably weep for the loss of such Pac-12 traditions as USC football fighting through the rain at Autzen or UCLA basketball playing through the madness at Mc-Kale, but those eyes must eventually dry to the new college sports reality.

The players are now being paid, the big-time programs have essentially become professional sports teams and so their accompanying schools must follow the money. If that means giving up an after-dark duel in Palo Alto for a prime-time showdown in Iowa City, you make that deal. If that means trading a quaint Friday night in Pullman for a nationally celebrated Saturday afternoon in State College, you do it.

There are, of course, some kinks in this grand plan. But for every question, there is a reasonable answer.

The travel is going to stink, particularly for the basketball teams. But, then again, both schools have played at distant locations in recent years — Maui and the Bahamas, for example — while attempting to sell themselves nationwide.

The change will also mean more hassle for the Olympic sports such as baseball and softball that are being dragged into the Big Ten along with the big two. But because football essentially pays for all the other athletic programs, those sports will benefit from the increased revenue.

Also, this could mean the end of a Pac-12 conference that has been around in some form for 63 years, and that’s sad, but, whoa nellie, this isn’t Keith Jackson’s game anymore.

Finally, there will be a loss of longtime rivalries, and that’s real and that hurts. No more long nights in the Arizona State desert. No more suffocating afternoons at Haas Pavilion.

But USC will keep its biggest rival. And UCLA will keep its biggest rival. And now they’ll play their games in prime time in front of millions, and isn’t that what fans from both schools should want?

There was really only one thing missing from Thursday’s landmark announcement. One person, actually.

As they join the Big Ten, there is no word yet on whether USC and UCLA will be bringing a certain Pac-12 institution with them, the crowning grace in this monumental shift, the big red cherry on top.

Bill Walton? You coming?

USC Trojans kicker Matt Boermeester celebrates by leading the band after defeating the Penn State Nittany Lions in the 2017 Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. (Associated Press)