LAS VEGAS — The Statue of Liberty might not be in UCLA’s future, at least to the extent it was during the Bruins’ inaugural men’s basketball season in the Big Ten.
Commissioner Tony Petitti plans to reassess the conference’s scheduling structure next spring, following the second competition year as an 18-team league with four West Coast schools.
“We’ll go through two years, then sit back and say, ‘What did we learn?’” Petitti told the Hotline at the Big Ten football media days event in Las Vegas.
“We have to understand that things change and look at it honestly over time.”
Although football receives the vast majority of attention, the Big Ten schedule has little flexibility because of the TV contracts with Fox, CBS and NBC that will pay the conference approximately $1 billion over seven years. The 9 a.m. kickoffs for West Coast teams playing in the Eastern Time Zone aren’t going away.
Instead, Petitti’s comments were directed at the Olympic sport schedules, including men’s and women’s basketball.
The Big Ten did its best to limit the frequency and duration of the cross-country trips for the West Coast teams traveling east and for the other 14 schools traveling west. But there was some public grumbling, particularly from Los Angeles.
At one point, UCLA basketball coach Mick Cronin bemoaned how often the Bruins had seen the Statue of Liberty. (One of UCLA’s trips to the East Coast came courtesy of a non-conference date with North Carolina.) And USC coach Eric Musselman expressed frustration with the way the L.A. schools were disadvantaged for certain home homes.
For example, the Trojans visited Rutgers on a Sunday in late February, then came home to face Ohio State the following Wednesday. The Buckeyes had been in L.A. for almost a week from a prior game with UCLA.
“UCLA, Washington, Oregon, USC, we’re in the hole two-to-four games,” Musselman said. “And it’s gonna be that forever for men’s basketball.”
Petitti might not have all the answers, but he’s listening.
“We owe it to everybody to continue evaluating,” he said.
One thing seems clear: Petitti will focus the Big Ten’s regular-season schedules on maximizing postseason bids in the Olympic sports. That is, after all, a vital piece of his controversial proposal for an expanded College Football Playoff.
Petitti proposed a model based on automatic qualifiers, with the Big Ten and SEC receiving four bids, the Big 12 and the ACC two each, and one for the top-ranked champion from the other conferences. All in all, 13 of the 16 slots would be allocated before the season begins.
The format would allow the Big Ten to add CFP play-in games on championship weekend with, for example, the No. 3 seed facing the No. 6 seed for one of the conference’s automatic bids.
The 4-4-2-2-1 model also would allow the Big Ten to explore a crossover in-season series against the SEC.
It would help preserve USC’s series against Notre Dame and allow other Big Ten teams to schedule marquee opponents in September without fear that a loss could keep them out of the CFP.
Exactly how the Big Ten would tweak the conference schedule for basketball, baseball or women’s soccer (to name three sports) is not known. Petitti first wants to assess Year 2 of the Big Ten’s grand experiment as the largest major conference in college sports history.
Also, the postseason formats could change in the most prominent Olympic sports: The NCAA is exploring March Madness expansion to either 72 or 76 teams (from the current 68).
The change could come in time for the 2026 tournament but, more likely, would be implemented in 2027 and beyond.
Petitti’s concern is that the quality depth in the Big Ten — in football, basketball and across the Olympic sports — could work against the conference.
The various selection processes for NCAA championships (and the College Football Playoff) were established before the West Coast schools arrived to create the massive conference.
“When you have a league as deep as we are, access is an issue,” he said. “You can be darn good and still be .500, so how do you qualify for the postseason? How do you schedule? We need to look at that.”
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Originally Published: July 23, 2025 at 11:14 AM PDT
