News of Southern Cal and UCLA joining the Big Ten for the 2024 season has rattled the college football world. While they aren’t the biggest programs to change conferences in recent years, it seems like the biggest domino to fall for several reasons.
College football programs have been changing conferences and realigning for a century, but never has it been so unabashedly about money or happening at the rapid pace it is now. The Big Ten went 50 years – from 1953 when they added Michigan State to 1993 when they added Penn State – without changing their conference makeup.