Brett McMurphy Foresees Further Big Ten and Big 12 Expansion
On Tuesday, Brett McMurphy of Action Network joined Paul Finebaum to discuss the latest conference realignment news. McMurphy didn't mince words, he expects both the Big Ten and the Big 12 to expand further. "The Big ten's not done," McMurphy said to start the interview. "I reported back in July, the sources told me they weren't done expanding. I'm still hearing that same information."
McMurphy's interview comes just one day after he reported that the Big Ten and Oregon had begun preliminary expansion discussions. "This is the first step along the process to add Oregon to the Big Ten," McMurphy said to clarify his report from Monday. "Basically at this point it's lawyers and people getting together and making sure, I guess a play on words, all the ducks are in a row."
McMurphy continued, "The biggest criticism of adding USC and UCLA is putting those student athletes out on an island. Well how do you solve that problem? You have four more schools from the Pac-12 and that takes care of any travel concerns. I think the Big 10 [gets] to 20 schools and I would think they would want to bring them in the same time as USC and UCLA before the 2024 season."
McMurphy has reported that the four Pac-12 schools being considered by the Big Ten are Oregon, Washington, Stanford, and Cal. Should the Big Ten expand further, it would create another conference realignment ripple effect.
"It wasn't too long ago we had the six [automatic qualifying] conferences. The so-called power conferences back then. The Big East was one of those six and what happened, they got raided by the ACC and now we're left at the Power Five. The same thing I think unfortunately is going to happen with the Pac-12. They're going to lose four schools to the Big Ten. And then I think four schools out of Pac-12, the Arizona schools, Utah and Colorado, take a lifeline to go to the Big 12. Then there's no more Pac-12 and then we'll be left with four power conferences. Although realistically there's only two."
Once the Big Ten gets to 20 schools, McMurphy expects the SEC to eventually match and get to 20 schools. However, the SEC's top targets are tied up in the ACC and its grant of rights.
"The sec I think would also want to get to 20," McMurphy said. "The challenge for the SEC is their top targets are all in the ACC and as you know, they were granted rights for 14 more years. However, if somehow some way somebody from the ACC can figure out a way to get out of the grant of rights, then I would expect the SEC to look very seriously at North Carolina, Virginia, Clemson and Florida State."
You can listen to the full interview of Brett McMurphy on the Paul Finebaum show here.
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