“Manifest destiny” is the romanticized 19th-century term describing the goal of American westward expansion to the Pacific Ocean. The term became popular after the Lewis and Clark Expedition traveled from the Midwest to what is now called Oregon and Washington on the West Coast. Collegiate sports conferences, such as the Big Ten (B1G), a league of Midwest universities formed in 1896, realized its manifest destiny on 6/30/22 when conference commissioner Kevin Warren announced that influential Southern California universities and longtime Pac-12 conference members the University of Southern California (USC) and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) would join. In 2023, the University of Oregon and the University of Washington were added, and the four West Coast member institutions were integrated into the conference at the start of the Fall 2024 semester. As the first conference to achieve manifest destiny, this was an utter triumph for the B1G, as this area of the country often has an inferiority complex from being referred to by derogatory terms like the Rust Belt and flyover country.
The history of the dissolution of the four West Coast teams’ former conference, the Pac-12, and the once-influential conference’s integration of former members into other athletic spheres of influence will be a topic of future books, but as in the banking and health care industries, acquisitions have been commonplace among the major collegiate conferences in America. The Fall 2024 college football season ushered in a new era as the Southeastern Conference (SEC) also integrated two new members, football behemoths the University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma. College football brings in $1.3 billion in annual earnings by the NCAA, half of which they distribute back to the universities (by comparison, the top 100 NCAA football programs (by earnings) generate nearly $5.6 billion in combined revenue), prompting recent conference realignment patterns. The most financially successful programs are in the B1G and SEC, due mainly to football. Of the top 25 schools in athletic revenue, 11 are members of the B1G, with Ohio State #1 at $279.5million. CNBC recently reported that Ohio State has the highest college athletics total brand value at $1.318 billion; B1G member the University of Michigan is at #4 with $1.062 billion. Coinciding with this recent phase of conference realignment is the inaugural 12-program college football playoffs, which included four B1G teams, more than any other conference. Truly, college athletics and football in particular play a major role in conference alignment.
The four West Coast schools’ admission to the Big Ten was not merely a result of synergies in football programs alone, however. Unlike other conferences across the country, academics and research are prioritized in the B1G. The Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) has been a fast-rising conduit for collaborative member benefits, drawing inspiration from longstanding nationwide elite higher education “clubs”. For instance, all 18 B1G member institutions are R1 universities, the top tier of 146 American research and Ph.D.-granting institutions (B1G member institutions awarded 9,332 PhDs last year).
In addition, 17 of the 18 B1G members are part of the elite American Association of Universities (AAU), a group of 69 research-based universities that utilize scholarly metrics and research prowess for admission. The AAU was initially formed in February 1900 by 14 Ph.D.-granting universities, including B1G members the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin, during an era when “American institutions received little respect from the major universities of Europe, and U.S. students were flocking overseas for their graduate education, particularly to Germany” (para. 2). AAU membership is by invitation only and requires three-quarters of the members to approve for admission. It evolved to meet the needs of higher education globally. Among current AAU duties are lobbying and advocating for higher education funding and for regulatory and policy collaborations in Washington, DC. Lone non-AAU B1G member the University of Nebraska is attempting to rejoin the AAU after being kicked out in 2011. The stature and influence of the AAU is reflected in reports that the B1G may have not approved Nebraska’s entrance into the conference in 2010 because it were not an AAU member.
The new BTAA members have publicly expressed enthusiasm for newfound opportunities that have become available for their faculty, staff, students, and campus stakeholders. The BTAA’s integration of the four West Coast members expanded the conference to 75k instructional staff, 810k students, and over $17 billion in annual research expenditures. It also provided access to a whopping 25+% of all print titles in North America within their library systems. The BTAA’s library system is now the world’s third-largest, consisting of 90 million books. It is behind only the Library of Congress and the British Library. The BTAA library system has been of particular interest at the University of Oregon, as UO librarian Alicia Salaz told Oregon Quarterly that “Those libraries will now also be our libraries” (para. 7). “UO President Karl Scholz and Provost Chris Long worked closely with peers in the alliance and have become strong proponents of the (BTAA) group” (para. 3).
Upon integration into the B1G in Fall 2024, the University of Washington’s leadership noted the academic and scholarly alignment of their new conference, observing the average graduation rate of member institutions (84%, or 20% above the national average). University of Washington Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Tricia Serio stated, “We share the same level of prestige, opportunities and priorities, so we are really aligned with a group of peers …. The Big Ten is the national model …. It’s the premier academic conference outside of the Ivy League … The conference shares our commitment to academic excellence and groundbreaking research” (para. 7). In September 2024, the UW Instagram account boasted about being part of the library system in particular: “This new partnership will increase access to collections, create more collaboration and positively impact the UW community. It will also create the Big Collection, a multi-faceted, multi-year effort to unite the collections of member institutions.”
The BTAA has an array of scholarly and academic endeavors. For instance, it serves as a conduit to connect department heads from across the conference via their Department Executive Officers Seminar to develop best practices including mentoring, performance reviews, and conflict resolution. It also unites cancer research centers to form the Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium (B1G member institutions engage in over $10 billion in funded research in, dwarfing the Ivy League’s total of $4.3 billion). Six member institutions rank in the top 20 of total National Science Foundation R&D expenditures, compared to zero from the SEC. The BTAA also provides course sharing and purchasing consortium opportunities. Another project is an annual members-only Data Visualization Championship competition in February 2025 as part of the “International Love Data Week”. In this competition, students are provided a data set and challenged to produce a data visualization or a graphical representation of the information through charts, graphs, and maps highlighting successes on their campus. The Penn State University Libraries department is encouraging entries, as “Penn State has a history of success in the competition. In 2024, Laura Guertin, distinguished professor of earth sciences at Penn State Brandywine, earned the BTAA Data Viz Champion title for their quilted visualization, “Blue Skies and Cloud Cover” (para. 3).
In December 2024, the BTAA recognized 2,002 student athletes on its prestigious Academic All-Big Ten team, including 772 football student-athletes; membership requires a GPA of 3.0 or higher. The BTAA sets itself apart as a premier assemblage globally that connects students academically and in scholarly pursuit like Ivy League schools while also competing on the gridiron against the foremost football programs in the SEC. Truly, the B1G is in a class by itself.
https://bigten.org/article/blt4983d3e6428e97c8
https://btaa.org/expansion/btaa-welcomes-four-new-members–oregon–ucla–usc–and-washington
https://btaa.org/leadership/department-executive-officers-seminar/Introduction
https://btaa.org/research/love-data-week/compete-in-the-2025-data-viz-championship
https://dailyemerald.com/151507/features/the-big-tens-impact-beyond-athletics/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Ten_Academic_Alliance
https://magazine.washington.edu/feature/heres-how-the-uw-benefits-from-the-new-big-ten-partnership/
https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/profiles/site?method=rankingbysource&ds=herd
https://news.uoregon.edu/content/new-oregon-quarterly-showcases-uos-move-big-ten-conference
https://www.aau.edu/aau-history
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/19/college-sports-programs-valuations.html
https://www.instagram.com/uofwa?e=f38ca27f-9cd3-43e3-ad3c-bacea2a826a3&g=5
