Canzano: Will Big Ten regret set in at UCLA?
Bruins in the Big Ten comes at a cost.
It may eventually pencil out for USC. The move to the Big Ten Conference may also work well for the University of Oregon, an outlier school with a deep-pocketed donor. But I’m left wondering how much regret UCLA will have about blowing up the Pac-12 Conference.
Are the Bruins better off?
The UC Regents met this week and President Michael Drake proposed that UCLA “contribute” $10 million a year to Cal as part of a settlement. That’s the tippy-top end of the $2 million to $10 million range the UC board members established last December.
The “Calimony” payment, if approved on May 14, will run through 2030. That’s a $60 million hit to a university that justified blowing up 108 years of history by announcing it was operating at a financial disadvantage in the Pac-12.
It will also be at a disadvantage in the Big Ten.
UCLA will receive roughly $65 million a year in the Big Ten’s media rights deal. There’s an additional $10 million in increased travel expenses. Another $4.5 million will go toward food, diet, and nutritional services for athletes. UCLA will also direct money toward both mental health and academic services.
Now, a payment of $10 million per year to Cal.
Oregon President Karl Scholz told me a couple of weeks ago that his university had to seek stability after the defections of the Los Angeles schools.
“That’s off-the-top 40 percent of the media market value,” Scholz told me.
Had UCLA stayed in the Pac-12, a potential media-rights deal would have captured the Los Angeles market. That’s 5.9 million TV homes. Remember the $30 million per school offer ESPN made to the Pac-12 CEO Group in the fall of 2022? It might have easily been $40 million per school with LA still part of the deal. Also, the Bruins might have used their new-found leverage to seek a lopsided share.
UCLA wants to be Ohio State.
I wonder if they’ll end up more like Rutgers.
The Scarlet Knights believed getting to the Big Ten would be their financial salvation. It hasn’t worked out like that. In the last seven years the athletic department has borrowed more than $100 million from the school’s general fund, collected more than $80 million in student-fee subsidies, asked the state of New Jersey for another $15 million, and took two separate loans totaling $48 million from the Big Ten.
Documents obtained by public records requests by NJ Advance Media last year showed the athletic department at Rutgers was carrying nearly $60 million in external debt and approximately $168 million in internal debt a few months before UCLA decided to jump to the Big Ten.
It may work out for Rutgers someday. Or the Scarlet Knights may find that they’re in a never-ending battle against their limitations, forever a step or two behind.
The college world is changing. Consolidation was inevitable. The Big Ten and SEC wanted more for themselves and television didn’t need five power conferences, or even four. Those conferences were playing chess, and the Pac-12 presidents and chancellors mistook the game for Tic-tac-toe.
Some Pac-12 leaders foolishly believed its schools were worth $50 million each, even without UCLA and USC. I guess you can argue that the Bruins and Trojans either: A) “played” the conference and were bad actors; or B) that they looked around and decided things were about to get serious and they wanted to be in a smarter board room.
I’ll grant that as a possibility. The Pac-12 leaders faceplanted in their moment of truth. But still, I wonder if UCLA will look back on the move in a decade or even a couple of years and wonder if life was better for them in the Pac-12.
Ex-UCLA football coach Chip Kelly isn’t a fool. He left the Bruins to become the offensive coordinator at Ohio State. Maybe Kelly is weary of dealing with NIL and the transfer portal. A lot of coaches are. Or maybe Kelly recognized that UCLA is about to fly all over the Midwest getting its teeth kicked in.
The summary from the UC Board of Regents meeting made me think about something else, too. The words of UCLA legend Bill Walton. He talked about going to the school “willingly, gladly, and proudly.” He called being at UCLA his dream.
Said Walton: “That dream never included the Big Ten.”
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