UCLA and USC will join the Big Ten in one year. This is their plan for an elite move.
LOS ANGELES — As their old conference ticks its way toward a shriveled, uncertain future — schools skedaddling seemingly by the day — UCLA and USC have formally commenced the countdown toward a more assured fate.
A clock unveiled by UCLA as part of a transition website counts the days, hours, minutes and seconds until the school and its cross-town rival officially become members of the Big Ten Conference on Aug. 2, 2024.
"That date is burned in our minds," said Sandy Barbour, the former Penn State athletic director who is part of USC's transition team.
The clock represents an opening salvo in the schools' final year of Pac-12 membership as they try to delicately walk the line between respecting the past and embracing the future. They have already spent more than a year adopting one mantra of John Wooden, the crossover basketball star who played for Purdue in the Big Ten before coaching at UCLA in the conference that would become the Pac-12.
If failing to prepare is preparing to fail, as Wooden liked to say, then UCLA and USC
