Dick Vitale voices concerns for athletes with USC, UCLA joining Big Ten

This week’s bombshell news of USC and UCLA leaving the Pac-12 for the Big Ten has widely been discussed from a college football perspective. Dick Vitale is concerned with what the B1G expansion means for athletes in other sports.

In a Friday night tweet, Vitale pondered the fairness of the Big Ten asking its student-athletes to take long flights for conference contests. Interestingly, the ESPN basketball broadcast did not mention hoops, though conference expansion will likely have USC and UCLA playing other Big Ten teams during the school week.

Thinking about UCLA & USC moving to @B1Gfootball – is it fair for the athletes in baseball , lacrosse , tennis swimming , soccer etc traveling to play UCLA / USC / does anybody care? The only thing that matters is Cash Cash $$$ baby .

— Dick Vitale (@DickieV) July 2, 2022

The Big Ten may already have a solution to the traveling concerns raised by Vitale and others. USC and UCLA have reportedly been told that “creative thinking” will help with scheduling, but there are doubts.

USC/UCLA athletic department sources tell me the travel strain on non-revenue sports was discussed before making the decision to leave Pac-12 for Big Ten.

Said one: “We got assurances from Big Ten that it would work with us on some creative thinking scheduling-wise.” pic.twitter.com/gYCf3ZHMYM

— John Canzano (@johncanzanobft) July 1, 2022

Unless the B1G is building a cross-country bullet train, no amount of “creative scheduling” is going to make a basketball schedule work https://t.co/SOOO75RgMH

— PodKATT (@valleyshook) July 1, 2022

Andrew Olson

Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.