The Big Ten changed its stance on expansion very quickly this summer. They eventually added the Oregon Ducks and Washington Huskies on Aug. 4. But just nine days earlier, at the conference’s football media days on Wednesday, July 26, commissioner Tony Petitti (seen above during that discussion) said the Big Ten’s presidents, chancellors, and athletic directors had directed him to focus on the upcoming integrations of the USC Trojans and UCLA Bruins in 2024 rather than pursuing any kind of further expansion:
“All the direction I’m getting from leadership — our presidents and chancellors and our athletic directors — is to focus on USC and UCLA. We have a lot of work to do there. I’m proud of the scheduling format we created in football. I think it touches on all the right things.”
“But we have significant work to do in scheduling for our other sports, especially our Olympic sports, to come up with the best solutions. We have a good plan in motion. I think we’ll learn from it. Like anything, there’ll be tweaks and changes. But overall, that’s really where we are. I’m not getting direction to do anything else other than that in terms of what the conference looks like right now.”
The conference’s actions after that were quite different. On Aug. 2, multiple reports had them exploring adding two to four Pac-12 schools. And on Aug. 4, they brought in the Huskies and Ducks.
So what changed? Well, Petitti (who only took that commissioner role in April, replacing Kevin Warren after Warren’s departure for the Chicago Bears in January) spoke about that and more to Nicole Auerbach of The Athletic in a piece published Thursday. There, Petitti said his July 26 comments were accurate at that time, but things changed quickly after the Colorado Buffaloes’ departure for the Big 12 (which was indicated as possible late on July 26, and became official the next day).
“The Colorado move to the Big 12 increased some inbound conversations,” Petitti said. “We then spent time talking about that with the group of our presidents, then involved the full group of presidents and the athletic directors just to sort of pursue what a structure would look like and (to discuss) whether it was real interest from Oregon and Washington. Those conversations all took place early during the week. What obviously changed was just the circumstances around it. It created a different timeframe.”
Petitti would go on to tell Auerbach that led to a frenetic week (with little sleep) of evaluating Oregon and Washington (even though much of that work had previously been done when the schools had previously been considered), then going to Fox for the extra money needed to bring them in, and conversing with athletic directors at those schools about the decision. He said those conversations happened until only shortly before the Ducks and Huskies decided to tell the Pac-12 they were leaving in the morning of Aug. 4 (minutes before a meeting where many Pac-12 schools thought they were coming together to sign a media rights deal with Apple), so everything was as frenetic on the inside as it looked from the outside. Here’s more on that from Auerbach’s piece:
“That was ongoing the whole week, and then it really accelerated when the interest became real to the point where we had to have something concrete to say, hey, they really do want to come here, and this is the path,” Petitti said. “Then we needed to go to our membership and make sure that this was the right thing to do, and we communicated that. All of this was going on late Thursday night into Friday morning.”
With Oregon and Washington administrators on the West Coast, conversations went deep into the night. Washington athletic director Jen Cohen (now at USC) and Oregon athletic director Rob Mullens were in constant communication, Petitti said. After a chaotic morning in which multiple Big Ten sources told The Athletic they doubted that they were going to get the two schools, Oregon and Washington informed the Pac-12 just ahead of its scheduled Friday morning meeting that they were joining the Big Ten. The league officially announced the news within hours.
It’s fascinating to hear that (at least from Petitti’s perspective) the Big Ten actually was not looking for additions here, and that this round of realignment (also including the Arizona Wildcats, Arizona State Sun Devils, and Utah Utes abandoning the Pac-12 for the Big 12, a move that cited the Oregon and Washington departures, and the Cal Golden Bears and Stanford Cardinal leaving for the ACC, a move that cited all the previous departures) all happened thanks to Colorado’s decision. That’s quite something for a school that went 1-11 in football last season and 4-8 the previous year.
But the Buffaloes are getting remarkable on-field recognition this year under new coach Deion Sanders, especially after a season-opening road win over the 2022-23 national runner-up TCU Horned Frogs. And it turns out their realignment move was maybe even more impactful.
