Oregon, Washington to join Big Ten Conference in 2024

The University of Oregon and the University of Washington are officially headed to the Big Ten Conference.

The Big Ten Council of Presidents/Chancellors voted Friday to admit Oregon and Washington to the Big Ten, effective Aug. 2, 2024. Both schools will begin athletic competition in 2024-25 academic year.

“We are excited to welcome the University of Oregon and the University of Washington to the Big Ten Conference,” Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti said in a statement. “We look forward to building long-lasting relationships with the universities, administrators and staff, student-athletes, coaches and fans. 

“Both institutions feature a combination of academic and athletic excellence that will prove a great fit for our future.”

The Big Ten cleared the way for Oregon and Washington to apply for membership and join the conference earlier on Friday, dealing a crushing blow to the beleaguered Pac-12.

[Related: Big Ten expansion: Joel Klatt on adding Oregon, Washington – ‘These are imminent moves]

Oregon and Washington will become the 17th and 18th members of the Big Ten, and the third and fourth on the West Coast, joining USC and UCLA. The Big Ten will now be the largest conference in major college sports, spanning 15 states from New Jersey to Washington.

Former Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren had encouraged member schools to strongly consider adding Oregon and Washington after the conference landed the two Los Angeles schools last summer — the blow that has sent the Pac-12 reeling for more than a year.

The latest departure from the Pac-12 pushed the storied West Coast college sports conference to the brink of extinction.

Klatt on next wave of conference expansion

Joel Klatt shares his thoughts on the next wave of conference expansion, which will likely impact the Pac-12, Big Ten, and Big 12 significantly.

Pac-12 leaders met early Friday to determine if the nine remaining schools, which at the time included Oregon and Washington, would accept the potential media rights deal with Apple that commissioner George Kilavkoff delivered to the group earlier this week, according to a person familiar with that meeting.

“Our schools are committed to each other and to the Pac-12. We’ll get our media rights deal done, we’ll announce the deal. I think the realignment that’s going on in college athletics will come to an end for this cycle,” Kliavkoff said last month during the Pac-12 football media day.

But the conferences’ two biggest remaining brands decided to seek a new home.

With Oregon and Washington jumping to the Big Ten, the Pac-12 is in danger of soon being down to four members: Stanford, California, Oregon State and Washington State.

Accorinng to reports, Arizona applied to and was admitted to the Big 12 earlier in the day, although no deal has been finalized. Both Utah and Arizona State have also applied for formal membership to the Big 12 Conference, according to the same report. The Big 12 is trying to get to 16 teams for next season in a conference that could also extend through 10 states and all four time zones.

The Big 12 and Commissioner Brett Yormark outmaneuvered the Pac-12 and agreed to an extension of media rights deals with ESPN and Fox with two years left on its deal.

That left a thin market for Kliavkoff and the Pac-12 and a deal that would have left its schools lagging behind the other Power 5 conferences in media rights revenue.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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