Canzano: Will USC and UCLA have Big Ten remorse?
Football and money? Or foolishness and money?
The residents of Gulf Shores were thrown for a loop this weekend. The beach town on Alabama’s Gulf Coast was busy letting its hair down, enjoying the NCAA beach volleyball championship tournament on its sugar-white sand, when a bizarre thing happened.
USC and UCLA left town.
The Trojans and Bruins are national powers in beach volleyball. USC and UCLA have won every beach volleyball national championship since the inception of the sport in 2016. This weekend, they were both knocked out of the single-elimination tournament. Loyola Marymount plays TCU in Sunday’s national final.
USC blew up the Pac-12 Conference in 2022 by back-channeling its way to the Big Ten. UCLA followed. A conference with 108 years of tradition was sunk amid the sea change.
UCLA alum, Bill Walton, told me, “This is all about football and money.”