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The Big Ten Conference has given an early look of how its new national footprint will work competitively.
Following the dramatic addition of USC and UCLA to create college sports’ first coast-to-coast conference, the Big Ten unveiled football schedule templates for the 2024 and 2025 seasons. Ending the conference’s divisional format, all 16 teams will use a new “flex protect plus” model which blends rotating opponents and protected rivalries.
Each team will still play nine intraconference games per year, and face every other conference opponent at least twice in a four-year period.
Perhaps most critically, rivalries such as Michigan-Ohio State and UCLA-USC that are a bedrock of college football will remain annual fixtures.
The format will be a key showcase in the conference’s $7 billion set of media rights deals with CBS, Fox, and NBC.
More Big 12 Moves?
Realignment that has rocked college sports in recent years could be continuing as Big 12 executives reportedly visited the University of Memphis to conduct “due diligence” toward potential conference expansion.
While Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark denied making the visit, Memphis has long desired to join a Power Five conference. Yormark also said earlier this month the conference has a “plan” for additional expansion after the July 1 arrivals of BYU, Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF in its aim to become a national entity.
