usc

Stunning news:

OFFICIAL: USC will join the Big Ten Conference in 2024.

— USC Trojans (@USC_Athletics) June 30, 2022

Stunning news, but in basketball:

news! UCLA is joining the Big Ten Conference at the start of the 2024-25 season!

➡️: https://t.co/ygoY70o2bo#GoBruins pic.twitter.com/Cgj5orGhiI

— UCLA Athletics (@UCLAAthletics) June 30, 2022

Broken today by Jon Wilner, at least two, and potentially more major Pac12 schools will join the Big Ten in two years. Clearly timed to coincide with the Big Ten renegotiating its TV rights deals, and meant to compete with the SEC's addition of Texas and Oklahoma, the move turns the Big Ten into a coast-to-coast conference of 16 with a third power program football. It also renders the Pac (back to) Ten something akin to what the Big XII will be when their two marquee programs leave in 2025, and almost certainly will precipitate more realignment.

The Big Ten had a bylaw that any schools they add be in neighboring states, but that was swiftly gotten around. Both schools were part of the Pac and its previous iteration, the Pacific Coast Conference, going back a century.

Sponsor Note. Let's say you've cloned a hundred duck-sized horses and want people to fight them. That sounds like something with a lot of legal complications. Is cloning… within the city… that ain't legal either? What happens if someone gets hurt? When someone gets hurt, more like it. It's a tough balance between the incredible appeal of finding out whether you can beat 100 duck-sized horses in a fight and the potential to be sued into the ground.

Well, have I got the guy for you.

Richard Hoeg knows this stuff, backwards and forwards. He's a business lawyer from the law factory who can tell you whether or not you should proceed with your idea. (Even if he says no you clearly should.) He'll get you set up with a legal framework to cope with the inevitable disasters if you decide to proceed (which you clearly will). And insofar as anyone can be protected from the law while running a business that is essentially cockfighting between miniaturized charismatic megafauna and humans, you will be.

What other lawyer can say that?

SNACKS! Sometimes there's a thing that gets put in your twitter feed 20 times and every time you click on it. This is one of those things:

JSU wild. Ya love to see it. pic.twitter.com/EzZ5OzcBr2

— Dorian (@AllHailDorian) March 3, 2020

Jackson State was super efficient at feeding Snacks shots; he got four up in his two minutes. This led to a Kenpom glitch: Snacks finishes his career with 82% usage and, uh, took 137% of JSU shots when he was on the floor?

A legendary Kenpom page.

You may remember Snacks from the quintessential Tacko Fall reaction video:

Still our favorite video of Tacko Fall

pic.twitter.com/GV5VTMaDrd

— Ballislife.com (@Ballislife) December 10, 2019

Someone's gotta hire the play by play guy. Anyone who can exclaim "SNACKS" like that needs to be doing the NCAA tournament.

[After THE JUMP: distressing times at Arkansas-Pine Bluff.]

Campanile retained. Rutgers settled for this guy:

This is seemingly good news for #Michigan, as Wolverines linebackers coach Anthony Campanile had been a target for the Rutgers DC job. Campanile is expected to stay with the Wolverines. Rutgers retained his brother Nunzio, who served as interim head coach for much of 2019 season.

— Adam Rittenberg (@ESPNRittenberg) January 14, 2020

That's good news. Turnover's going to happen; losing the guys generally thought of as your top two recruiters at the same time would have been bad. Unfortunately it seems like retaining Campanile means the guy replacing Partridge isn't going to be Kentucky DB coach Steve Clinkscale but rather an assistant from the S&C staff named Tank Wright, per Webb.

Imagine Ohio State passing up an excellent position coach who is also a proven top notch recruiter so they can hire someone with zero track record because they can't find 100k. Would never happen. OSU might hire an incompetent because of nepotism, but they would never say they lack resources.

On the other hand. Tank Wright got married in the weight room.

What Strength & Conditioning Coach you know got married in a Weightroom? #BoutDatAction. Happy Anniversary Mrs Wright. 12/13/2018! pic.twitter.com/18horzAVKg

— TENARIUS TANK WRIGHT (@TankWright) December 14, 2019

If you can recruit a woman to get married in a damn weight room how hard can flagging down high school kids be?

[After THE JUMP: Dantonio deposed]