USC and UCLA administrators were led to believe by their peers in the Big Ten that they were special. If the Big Ten thought it had to add Stanford or Cal or Washington, USC could probably live with it. USC was enthralled by the Big Ten opportunity for many reasons that we’ve covered here — the money and the exposure, mostly. The Big Ten move was supposed to clearly reestablish USC as the top program on the West Coast. USC’s climb back to the top, however, unquestionably would become more arduous if the Big Ten indeed comes Duck calling.

Source: Los Angeles Times August 04, 2023 03:05 UTC