It is overshadowed by potentially unexpected financial gains for athletes, whether they are footballers or long-distance runners, who will travel regularly to and from Los Angeles to distant campuses at State College, Pa. New Brunswick, NJ; and College Park, Md., for competition. The deal could cast a shadow over the tenure of Kevin Warren, the Big Ten commissioner from 2019, who sparked criticism in 2020 when his league initially decided not to play in the autumn football season due to the pandemic. Although the conference eventually overturned its decision and organized a fraction of the games it had planned, the episode has followed Warren ever since. (Pac-12, under Larry Scott, also canceled and revived the 2020 football season.) At the same time, the USC and UCLA departures are putting an acute test on George Kliavkoff, who became Pac-12 commissioner a year ago. Last August, in the wake of the Oklahoma and Texas decisions, the league said it had no plans to expand “at this time,” in part because of “the current competitive strength and cohesion of our 12 universities.” For now, at least, members of the conference include California, Oregon, Stanford, Utah and Washington. Kevin Draper contributed to the report.
