UO release – One of the strongest national brands in college athletics will join a conference that spans the nation from coast to coast for the 2024-25 academic year. Amid the shifting landscape of college athletics, the University of Oregon took a historic step to solidify its future Friday by announcing a move to the Big Ten Conference beginning in the fall of 2024. The Ducks will conclude more than a century of competition against conference rivals on the Pacific Coast in 2023-24, before joining Washington, USC and UCLA in the Big Ten the following year. More than a year of analysis of the evolving college athletics world by UO officials saw Friday dawn with the Ducks in deep discussions about their future. But day’s end, that future had been solidified with the Big Ten. “We’ve been working over the last 13, 14 months about getting a great understanding about ourselves – our TV ratings, our social media reach, our demographics – to make sure that we understood ourselves and were prepared for the changing landscape in college athletics,” UO director of athletics Rob Mullens said in a press conference Friday. “… So we had a really strong sense of ourselves, understood everything about ourselves, so we could make a good decision. And we’re proud to be here today and receive this invite, and look forward to the future.” Early Friday afternoon, Big Ten officials agreed to extend invitations to Oregon and Washington, a year after announcing plans to add USC and UCLA in the fall of 2024. The UO Board of Trustees then met and voted unanimously to adopt the recommendation by new University President Karl Scholz that they accept the invitation. “The Big Ten is not only a remarkably strong athletic conference, it’s one of the premier academic conferences in the country – indeed, I would say it’s the finest academic-athletic conference in the country,” said Scholz, formerly dean and provost at Big Ten member Wisconsin. “By inviting the University of Oregon to be a member of the Big Ten, we have the opportunity to accelerate our extraordinary record of innovation and success on the playing field, as well as to enhance significantly the academic reputation of the university.” Oregon will remain with the Pac-12 Conference through the rest of the league’s existing media-rights agreement, which runs through the upcoming academic year. Scholz called Friday “both a difficult and a joyous day” as the Ducks near the conclusion of competition in a conference they’ve occupied in various forms almost uninterrupted since 1916. “We have a lot of friends in this league; these type of changes do impact people, and we have deep relationships with those people,” Mullens said. “So we’re thinking about those people in this change as well.” Mullens said it will be a goal to maintain the rivalry with Oregon State in all applicable sports. The Big Ten recently began a seven-year media-right agreement that runs into 2030. Oregon and Washington will receive partial shares of revenue from that agreement when they begin competition in the conference in 2024, but even so Scholz said he anticipates the UO athletic department “averaging over $50 million just from direct media rights” over a 10-year period as the Ducks transition to a receiving a full share of Big Ten revenue. That figure, he said, will be “larger than the media rights that we thought would be attainable through other mechanisms,” including remaining with the Pac-12. “One of the things I’m really proud of the University of Oregon is, tuition revenue does not end up supporting our remarkable athletic program,” Scholz said. “And we needed to continue to find opportunities to support the athletic program to keep that the case, so we can invest both in world-class academics and world-class athletics. We think this deal provides that opportunity.” One impact of that increase in media-rights revenue will be helping offset new logistics of competing in a conference with campuses all along the West Coast as well as the Midwest and East Coast. “Obviously we know there’s going to be some added travel costs, and we will solve for that,” Mullens said. “In our conversations with the leadership at the Big Ten, they understand the importance of scheduling, and I was very impressed with how thoughtful they are to this, and the impact. So I’m confident we’ll find a good solution to make sure we find the right balance for our student-athletes.” The move to the Big Ten comes less than two months into the presidency of Scholz. But since being named to the position in March, he said, he’s been engaged with the UO Board of Trustees about the next step for the university. “There’s a common theme to everything we talked about,” Scholz recounted Friday. “And that theme is, how do we make the University of Oregon an even better university five years, 10 years and 15 years from now? Today, we’ve been granted one of those opportunities.”
