Last June, USC and UCLA announced their move to the Big Ten. Then the real work began. Namely? The travel. Can the schools provide all of the support that their programs need and do it in a cost-effective way? NicoleAuerbach on the long prep process.
That is the crux of the challenge: Travel alone isn’t a new concern, but the length of the trips in the aggregate will be. Can they provide all of the support that their programs need and do it in a cost-effective manner?These two schools say yes. But their leaders still have much to do in the lead-up to next August, as does, who reiterated last week that his No. 1 priority is a smooth integration of USC and UCLA into the conference.
For more than a year, every decision or idea about UCLA’s move to the Big Ten has run through Matt Elliott. He’s the Bruins’ chief strategy officer and the official point person for the move. Elliott brings more than 10 years of experience in Westwood to his discussions with a boss in Jarmond who has lived and worked at two Big Ten schools. Together, they assembled a three-phase process for 2022-2024.
They also plan to increase staffing for both mental health and academic support. Academic advisors will travel with teams. Additional support ideas could include noise-cancelling headphones for all athletes, and maybe Wi-Fi hotspots, too, to make it easier to do schoolwork while traveling. Elliott suggested that athletes might also want to take more summer classes, so their schedules are a bit lighter and more flexible in-season.
“It’s just really the process of connecting all of those dots,” said USC senior associate athletic director Ed Stewart. “A lot of that has to do with: What are the competition models going to ultimately look like? We know what that looks like now in football. So, that box is checked. That’s the first domino to drop, if you will, and now we’re going to try and see what those actual competitive models will ultimately look like, across the board in all sports.
For example, maybe the league can pair UCLA men’s soccer with USC women’s volleyball, and the two teams could charter together to play Northwestern and Illinois on the same weekend. Alternatively, they could fly commercial together and share buses. One other example of the minutiae of these travel considerations: In this scenario, the order of the L.A. teams’ games should be Illinois, followed by.
Scheduling with postseason qualification in mind was a priority when creating the new football model. The Big Ten wants challenging but balanced slates for the best teams so that multiple teams can be positioned for at-large bids in the new 12-team College Football Playoff. That same philosophy can be taken with, say, softball.