What might the future of Big Ten Football look like?

Well, it’s official. USC and UCLA have officially been accepted into the Big Ten conference, and the future of college football has officially arrived.

This begs the question: what does the future of the Big Ten – and really the future of college football as a whole – look like?

For starters, don’t expect this to stop with USC and UCLA. Surely there will be more schools joining the Big Ten in the near future, it’s just a matter of who and when.

So, let’s start with who else could possibly join the Big Ten.

In all likelihood, more teams from the west coast (or at least further west than the Big Ten currently extends) would make the most sense. If not, USC and UCLA would be on their own island out in southern California and have to travel quite a distance to play anyone but each other.

It seems like some of the Trojans and Bruins’ current conference-mates in the Pac-12 could interested in following the two blue bloods to the Big Ten.

One potential option would be for the Oregon Ducks to come aboard as well. The school didn’t deny the possibility of it happening.

One thing is for sure, it would be interesting to see the Ducks in their gaudy, traffic director uniforms matched up against some of the classic uniforms throughout the Big Ten – most notably Penn State, of course.

According to an article by Spartans Wire, Oregon has already applied to join the Big Ten, along with the only other program from the conference to have appeared in the College Football Playoff to this point: Washington.

The Huskies are another team that Penn State is somewhat familiar with – at least compared to some other Pac-12 schools – as the two met in the 2017 Fiesta Bowl in a game that the Nittany Lions won 35-28. Penn State is 3-0 all-time against Washington, with the first matchup taking place more than a century ago, way back in 1921; and the second in 1983 in the Aloha Bowl in Hawaii.

The final two schools from the Pac-12 that could be potential candidates to join the Big Ten are Cal and Stanford. While the two are not football powers by any means – though they do each feature some outstanding lettermen – the addition would be great for the Big Ten academically, and the Golden Bears and the Cardinal would definitely bring something to the table in numerous other sports.

Cal and Stanford would also allow the furthest west region of the conference to remain balanced on the gridiron.

When might some of these other schools join the Big Ten?

Well assuming the report that Oregon and Washington have already submitted their application is true, and assuming they are accepted in the coming weeks, they too would likely join in 2024, just like USC and UCLA.

If not by then, maybe a year or two after; because one thing is for sure, this is all going to move very quickly, just like the addition of USC and UCLA which all took place over the course of a few hours.

The conference will likely keep gradually expanding over the course of the next decade, as college football’s two most powerful conferences (Big Ten and SEC) continue to grow into a pair of super-conferences that will dominate the future of the sport more than they already have.

Once more dominoes begin to fall, we will have a better understanding of what the future of the sport will look like, but it certainly will look different than it does right now.

College football has always evolved and will continue to do so, so embrace it.