INDIANAPOLIS — There was a time, once, before Greg Schiano brought the chop to the banks of the Raritan River in New Jersey, when Rutgers breaking into the Big Ten Conference was merely a pipe dream.
It became a quest of his for a decade, the longtime head football coach reflected, speaking to media at Tuesday’s Big Ten Media Day. It was, to him, the best conference in football. It was where he, born and raised in New Jersey, felt Rutgers belonged. It was a “blessing,” as Schiano called it, when they finally broke through and accepted an invite to the Big Ten in 2012, even a few months after he’d left for the NFL.
So could Schiano imagine, two decades ago, coaching Rutgers in the Big Ten? Yes. Without a doubt.
Now, could he imagine coaching Rutgers – and playing USC? And playing them as a fellow Big Ten member at the Coliseum in October? And playing them on a Friday night?
“I would lie,” Schiano grinned Tuesday, pausing to recollect the mind of a younger self, “if I said I could picture that USC was in that Big Ten.”
The West Coast’s crashing of the Big Ten has been anticipated for two years now, since the bombshell announcement that USC and UCLA were abandoning the Pac-12, since Oregon and Washington followed suit a year later. But it didn’t quite become real until Tuesday, when commissioner Tony Petitti strode to the on-field podium inside cavernous Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, flanked by an end-to-end banner flashing USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington’s logos along the rest of the conference’s programs.
“College football,” Petitti declared to hundreds of media members sitting on the field, “has never been stronger, especially in the Big Ten Conference.”
College football has also, undoubtedly, never been weirder.
Two years of benchmarking and scheduling have passed since USC and UCLA’s move, and yet just as many conference-wide questions linger upon their official entry into the Big Ten, their debuts just a short month away. The possibility of further Big Ten expansion still lingers. There’s no overarching plan for the revenue-sharing model introduced in the House v. NCAA settlement. That official agreement, too, could also reduce the number of roster spots for Power Four programs, according to ESPN.
Petitti addressed it all in a 30-minute press conference Tuesday, with coaches from a handful of schools later weighing in on the rapid change across the Big Ten.
Even as the Big Ten has become the Big Eighteen, smoke still swirls around the potential that the conference could expand. There’s Florida State, if the ACC eventually goes the way of the Pac-12. Maybe Clemson. Maybe North Carolina.
Petitti made clear Tuesday, though, that the Big Ten was focused on ironing out the kinks of its current metamorphosis rather than hunt for more members.
“We’re focused on the 18 right now,” Petitti said to a question about possible further expansion. “That’s what we’re focused on. We had to do a lot of work, a lot of work had been done to integrate USC, UCLA, we started that work over – when we added Oregon, Washington.”
“So I think we’re really comfortable where we are,” he continued. “We gotta get this conference right, and that’s where our focus is.”
USC – and, presumably, a host of other programs – will opt into the model set forth in a May class-action settlement of three pending lawsuits against the NCAA, which proposes that each school can directly share upwards of $20 million in athletic revenue with players. The settlement is anything from finalized; Petitti anticipated Tuesday the final brief would be submitted by the end of the week. If approved by a judge in the months to come, however, it could introduce a clear payment model for schools in the Big Ten.
As Petitti explained Tuesday, the Big Ten would now encourage collegiate athletes to take advantage of three monetary sources: scholarships, revenue-sharing, and NIL earnings through established third-party collectives. The conference would need to introduce a reporting system, or a “cap,” to monitor the amount schools were spending through revenue-sharing, Petitti said.
But deeper decisions – like how schools will divide that revenue among its athletic programs or its student-athletes – will be left up to individual schools rather than establishing a conference-wide model, Petitti made clear.
“I think that’s the right way to do it,” Petitti said.
The Southern California News Group asked a variety of Big Ten coaches during media sessions on Tuesday in Indianapolis about their thoughts on revenue-sharing, and the responses ran the gamut, with one common theme:
All had little idea of how it’d actually work.
“You know, my opinions on it don’t really matter,” Purdue coach Ryan Walters put it, matter of fact.
Northwestern second-year head coach David Braun felt the revenue-sharing model “placed our hand,” he said, as the program continues to work to raise NIL funds. Ohio State’s Ryan Day called it a “great opportunity,” but emphasized the need for uniformity – which the Big Ten may not offer – around the breakdown of revenue among different teams under Title IX rules. Schiano, a longtime advocate for collegiate athletes being paid, lamented the legal battle.
“I wish we could’ve gotten to the place where, there was revenue-sharing, where it was a collaborative effort,” Schiano said. “Where it’s not getting told to you, ‘This is the way we’re doing it.’”
The Big Ten championship would stay at Lucas Oil Stadium, Petitti announced Tuesday, through 2028.
When asked about the possibility of expanding events to Vegas or other Western sites given the conference changes, Petitti all but confirmed Tuesday in his presser that the Big Ten would look into hosting championships on the West Coast.
“I think it’s really important that markets around the country get to experience Big Ten championships, and it’s a really good way to connect the conference,” Petitti said. “So I think, over time, you’ll start to see the geographic footprint expand, keeping in mind competitive issues.”
ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported Thursday that conference commissioners were in talks to reduce the number of college football roster spots to 105, with Petitti noting that the reporting was “accurate” on Tuesday.
If that sticks – another byproduct of the May class-action settlement, which would eradicate scholarship limits – it would mean a drastic change to how Big Ten programs operate. USC carried 110 players on its roster in 2023, and Day pointed to concerns with reducing roster sizes from around 120, a number the Ohio State coach asserted “we’ve all used for years.”
“If you have injuries, if you have attrition at 105, there’s got to be something in place to be able to replace,” Day said.
