UCLA Faculty Association: Moving Right Along: The Big Ten Strategy for the Final Regents Meeting

Wednesday, December 14, 2022

Moving Right Along: The Big Ten Strategy for the Final Regents Meeting

As by now all blog readers will know, the Regents are meeting today at UCLA. The Health Services Committee will meet first in the morning and will likely hear about the student worker strike in public comments.

In the afternoon, however, comes the Big Event: What is billed as the final meeting to decide whether to override Chancellor Block and veto UCLA's move from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten. (This session is also the final Regents meeting of 2022; the meeting that was set for tomorrow in Riverside of the Special Committee on Innovation Transfer & Entrepreneurship has been cancelled.)

As we have noted in past blog postings, both athletic conferences have adopted various strategies for trying to influence the Regents. The most recent - by the Pac-12 - is to highlight the fact that its Big Buck negotiations for TV and media rights are stalled because no one knows for sure what the Regents will do.* The Big Ten, in contrast, seems to have adopted a moving-right-along strategy. That strategy seems to be to assume that UCLA's move to the Big Ten is a Done Deal and therefore very publicly set plans for the future on that assumption. The Done-Deal approach - we're just moving right along - seems to be to emphasize that the agreement reached last summer by UCLA under full authority of the Regents is ironclad. The implicit implication of moving right along with future plans is that breaking the deal would lead to costly litigation. From The Athletic:

As college football conferences weigh changes to their scheduling structures before College Football Playoff expansion, the Big Ten will incorporate a methodical approach to 2024. The Big Ten will keep its East and West divisions through the 2023 season, and then USC and UCLA are slated to become official members on Aug. 2, 2024. It’s a near certainty the conference will then switch to a single-conference layout for scheduling and championship game qualification. But there are a few details to discuss before making it official, largely the number of protected rivals and opponent frequency. The topic has generated significant discussion but likely will wait until the league’s winter meetings in mid-February or perhaps as late as the spring meetings in May before it concludes.

“The goal is to have it done soon,” said Iowa athletics director Gary Barta, who ranks second in tenure among Big Ten [athletic directors] behind Ohio State’s Gene Smith. “I don’t know what soon is, but at this point, it’ll be into the next year. But the sooner the better because we’re all trying to make plans. I think most of us anticipate where it’s headed, but we need to finalize it.”

Other issues have taken precedence over the future scheduling model, especially after the Big Ten accepted USC and UCLA on June 30. The conference had to finalize a future media rights deal, which it did in mid-August. Commissioner Kevin Warren then focused on the intricacies and negotiations associated with Playoff expansion, which was approved for 12 teams and will begin in 2024...