USC left the Pac-12 and joined the Big Ten for several reasons, but one was certainly money. The Big Ten is giving the school what it expected: large revenue distributions. From the Big Ten website:
“The Big Ten Conference today (Friday) announced a distribution of $1.37 billion to the conference’s 18 member institutions for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2025, marking the largest distribution in conference history. This represents an increase of $490 million when compared to the fiscal year ending June 30, 2024, during which the conference distributed $883 million. The distributions provide meaningful support to institutions in their continued effort to provide broad-based athletic opportunities to more than 14,000 Big Ten student-athletes.
“The record disbursement reflects the first full year of the Big Ten’s current broadcast media rights agreements, as well as the conference’s success in the first year of the expanded College Football Playoff. It also marks the first year in which the conference was comprised of 18 world-class universities following the additions of Oregon, UCLA, USC and Washington in August 2024.
“Big Ten institutions have captured each of the last three College Football Playoff Championships (Indiana in 2026, Ohio State in 2025 and Michigan in 2024) and featured the most selections from any conference in the first round of the 2026 NFL Draft. Earlier this month, the conference became the first to ever have three different universities claim the football, women’s basketball (UCLA) and men’s basketball (Michigan) championships in one academic year.
“Since November, Big Ten schools have won NCAA titles in field hockey (Northwestern), men’s soccer (Washington), wrestling (Penn State), men’s water polo (UCLA), women’s ice hockey (Wisconsin) and women’s water polo (USC). Collectively, the 18 members of the Big Ten Conference educate more than 817,000 students and conduct $19.6 billion in research each year.”
All this money is great. Now the money question: When will USC football turn this into a playoff berth? When will USC men’s basketball make the Sweet 16? Underachieving programs need to start achieving. They need to be, as the kids say, “cash money.”
This article originally appeared on Trojans Wire: Big Ten revenue distributions mark new record for conference
Reporting by Matt Zemek, Trojans Wire / Trojans Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
