Washington football safety Kamren Fabiculanan was fielding questions with ease. Sitting at the podium inside Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, the well-dressed and bespectacled Fabiculanan delved into how the Huskies were responding to their new head coach and defensive coordinator.
But when asked by a Daily Iowan reporter how many cities in the state of Iowa he could name off the top of his head, the safety kept his answer succinct.
“Iowa. That’s it,” he said with a smile.
Hailing from Camarillo, California, the defensive back grew up more than 1,800 miles from Kinnick Stadium. A trip from his Washington campus to the Iowa Pentacrest is a 27-hour drive. For most of his life, Fabiculanan had no reason to know anything about Iowa or the Midwest. For his first five years with the Huskies, the senior most likely viewed the Big Ten as a potential bowl game opponent — not a conference foe to prepare for every week.
Yet such is the case in the 2024-25 college football season, where former PAC-12 squads Washington, Oregon, USC, and UCLA will compete in an 18-team Big Ten Conference complete with a longer season, more travel, and a plethora of unfamiliar experiences. Football and Olympic sports student-athletes, coaches, and administrators are left to navigate this new landscape and embrace it for its challenges but also its unprecedented opportunities.
From Power Five to Power Four
The additions of the four West Coast schools started on June 30, 2022, when USC and UCLA were granted admittance to the Big Ten via a unanimous vote by conference presidents and chancellors. The two schools would officially make the transition on Aug. 2, 2024.
“We want to position our student-athletes at UCLA to be the best and to be in a position of strength,” Jarmond said in a 2022 interview on SportsCenter. “We have 119 national championships, and it’s important to support all 25 of our programs. At the end of the day, with this seismic change in college athletics, we want to be in a position of strength at UCLA, and that’s what we intend to do.”
For the Trojans and Bruins — who had been with the PAC-12 since 1922 and 1928, respectively — the move was a stark break of tradition but offered the lucrative luxury of reaping in a share of the new Big Ten media rights deal. The PAC-12’s $3 billion deal with ESPN and FOX was set to expire at the end of the 2023 season, and the conference was still in the process of finding a future suitor.
The Big Ten’s agreement — spanning seven years and shelling out $7 billion from NBC, FOX, and CBS — was signed on Aug. 18, 2022. USC and UCLA would each receive a piece of the pie, which ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg reported would be between $80-$100 million a year.
That share would dwindle a little more than a year later as Oregon and Washington jumped ship on Aug. 4, 2023. That same day, fellow PAC-12 schools Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, and Colorado joined the Big 12. The PAC-12 was down to two teams — Oregon State and Washington State — and left scrambling for a media rights deal.
The PAC-12 would eventually sign a one-year deal with FOX and The CW in May 2024 and will add new teams in the future. Former Mountain West schools Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, Utah State, and San Diego State are set to join in the summer of 2026, as will former West Coast Conference powerhouse Gonzaga, which doesn’t have a football team but is known for its talent in basketball.
When college football kicked off the 2024-25 season, the Power Five — a term used to describe the NCAA premier Division I conferences — was now the Power Four, with the Big Ten as an 18-team superconference complete with a sharp uptick in quality competition.
On the gridiron, all four of the incoming schools had winning records in 2023, with Oregon and Washington battling in the PAC-12 title game in December.
Despite its coach leaving for the Alabama job in the offseason and star quarterback Michael Penix Jr. departing to the NFL, Washington is 4-2 and 2-1 in Big Ten play.
The Ducks boasted the second-best offense in the nation in 2023, averaging 44.2 points and 346.9 yards per game. Head Coach Dan Lanning made a splash in the transfer portal, signing Oklahoma quarterback Dillon Gabriel for his final season of college eligibility. Gabriel ranks 16th in the nation in passing efficiency, completing 77.8 percent of his passes for 1,449 yards and 11 scores as the Ducks have broken out to a 5-0 mark this season.
Oregon ranks No. 3 in the nation in the most recent Associated Press poll, while USC and UCLA are unranked. The Trojans picked up an impressive road win against LSU in Week 1, but have struggled on the road against Big Ten foes, dropping decisions to Minnesota and Michigan. Meanwhile, UCLA and new head coach Deshaun Foster have dropped five straight contests by a combined 20.75 points. Despite the four new schools’ varying degrees of success, they are each united in the challenge of travel.
Coast-to-coast action
According to a study from Ben Mendelowitz of Action Sports Network, UCLA will travel the second-farthest for any Division I football team this fall, totaling 11,027 miles across its 12 regular season games. The Bruins have played road matchups against Hawaii, LSU, and as part of their Big Ten slate, will fly out east to Penn State, Rutgers, and Nebraska.
Out of the top 10 schools in mileage, the Big Ten features the second most, trailing the Mountain West. Behind UCLA is Washington in fifth place with 8,832 miles and USC following with 6,981. Sitting at No. 13 is Oregon, which will fly 6,262 miles.
Every Big Ten school falls within the top 110, with 13 of the 18 institutions sitting in the top 75. For second-year conference commissioner Tony Petitti, building schedules is a collaborative process involving coaches, university administrators, and even Big Ten leadership at the presidential level.
“We’ve taken a lot of care to try to minimize travel where we can,” he told reporters at 2024 Big Ten Football Media Days in July. “I will tell you that we feel really good about where we’ve ended up across all of our sports.”
“Having said that, I really believe that scheduling is something that has to be constantly evaluated by sport, and I anticipate that we’ll get, hopefully, a lot more right these next couple of years with the way we’ve formatted and scheduled,” he continued. “But it’s our responsibility and our job to listen to student-athletes, to listen to coaches to make sure that we’re adjusting and making the changes we need.”
Petitti said it would be reasonable to assume future alterations, but based on testimony from head coaches and administration, the extra travel doesn’t pose too much of a burden.
In an August interview with The Los Angeles Times, UCLA Athletic Director Jarmond said travel would be “incremental, not seismic.” He noted that most sports will have one or two trips per year to a different time zone. The Bruins football team has five trips to a different time zone — Hawaii, Penn State, Rutgers, LSU, and Nebraska — but only three take place during the UCLA school year.
“It’s individualized, so we worked with our UCLA sleep clinic, bringing doctors into the process to guide us,” Jarmond said in the interview. “They’re going to provide detailed guidance on departure times, dates, and sleep scheduling for teams. They’re also providing overall sleep education to coaches and staff. So that’s going to be individualized and ongoing, based on the team.”
For Iowa football, the Hawkeyes will travel 3,397 miles this season — ranking 69th in Division I and 10th in the Big Ten — hitting two different time zones in November trips to Maryland and UCLA.
The trip to the West Coast during the regular season will be a rare one for the Hawkeyes, who last ventured out there in 2010, when they went to Tucson in September for a matchup against Arizona. For Paul Federici, now in his 16th year as director of football operations at Iowa, in-season travel out west poses its own set of challenges.
For instance, the team will leave the morning before its contest against UCLA, and the lights-out time the night before games is usually 11 p.m. CT.
Federici said if the team doesn’t adjust to the different time zone, then that would be 1 a.m., but if they do, that time would shift to 9 p.m. — times both deemed unreasonable.
Another hurdle involved in the trip to Pasadena will be delivering equipment, which for typical road trips in the Midwest is delivered via truck two days before game day. This time around, that truck will likely leave on Tuesday for a cross-country trip through the Rocky Mountains.
“The logistics of getting everything there and back will be assembled quite differently than even a trip to Maryland would look,” Federici said. “That trip represents something anticipated that we’ve not yet experienced.”
Federici said Iowa’s traveling squad, which contains up to 74 players as opposed to the 100-plus on the active roster, will get back to campus around 6 a.m. the following morning after the battle with the Bruins.
This is not ideal from a sleep and recovery perspective, Ferderici noted, but he added that the bye week afterward provides a respite before the Hawkeyes go to Maryland the following week.
For PAC-12 teams heading to the Midwest, preparation will also be key. Washington football’s head coach Jedd Fisch said he and the Huskies would make the trip up to Iowa City on Thursday ahead of the Saturday 11 a.m. Central kickoff.
The Big Ten announced one of its goals is to ensure that a school plays all 17 other conference foes at least twice, home and away, within a five-year period.
“That’s a heck of a jigsaw puzzle for somebody or some computer algorithm to put together,” Federici said.
In the context of the Big Ten’s expansion, even the nature of football has come under scrutiny.
Regional styles
The PAC-12 has been known for Air Raid offenses where passing is routine. Iconic “PAC-12 After Dark” games have point totals stretching near triple digits. For instance: a Sept. 21, 2019, contest between UCLA and Washington State where the Bruins emerged with a 67-63 victory.
The teams’ two quarterbacks combined for 1,077 passing yards on 66 completions — no overtime needed.
In a 2021 study from Pro Football Focus, contests between two PAC-12 teams averaged 59.5 total points since 2014, a whole touchdown lower than the Big Ten.
In 2023, the PAC-12 sported six of the top 50 squads in the FBS in terms of points per game compared to the Big Ten’s three. That year, PAC-12 teams averaged 29.7 points per game while the Big Ten averaged 23.7 points.
Nebraska offensive lineman Ben Scott has experienced both sides of the coin, having played at Arizona State for three seasons before transferring.
After starting 11 games for the Cornhuskers last season, Scott said he has a fair idea of what makes Big Ten football unique.
The center explained how the conference features more 12-13 personnel groupings, wherein two or three tight ends line up on the line of scrimmage to serve as extra blockers in run plays.
If a team wants any success, it will have to stop this strategy again and again.
“It’s a game of inches in the Big Ten,” Scott said at Big Ten Football Media Days. “We’ve got a lot of big guys lining up, a lot of big D-linemen, a lot of big O-linemen.”
Washington running back Jonah Coleman said he is aware of the stigmas of West Coast football, where defense and physicality are not as emphasized as they are in the Midwest.
Hailing from Stockton, California, the junior has grown up with the PAC-12 but doesn’t view football as too much of a regional game.
“At the end of the day, it’s football. You put on your cleats and lace them up just like me,” he said. “We both know that at the end of the day, it’s going to be a battle of who wants it more and who worked the hardest.”
Part of the reason for style contrasts between the Big Ten and PAC-12 is the weather.
It is difficult to throw 40-yard spirals in negative temperatures with wind gusts of more than 20 miles an hour.
So, when teams like UCLA make a trip to Nebraska in November, they might be in for a rude and chilly awakening.
Bruins quarterback Ethan Garbers has known sunny skies and calm breezes his whole life, having grown up in Newport Beach, California.
He said the coldest weather he’s ever played in was 50 degrees, and that number is sure to drop this season.
“It’s going to be good,” Scott said of the upcoming matchup with the Bruins. “Get ready for some Big Ten ball.”
Olympic sport impact
While the Big Ten’s conference expansion has made a seismic impact on the football world, smaller Olympic sports also have to deal with new competition and schedules. Unlike football, these sports play multiple games during the week and do not have bye weeks to separate long trips.
For Iowa women’s soccer head coach Dave Dilanni, his initial reaction to expansion was one of excitement. USC and UCLA have combined for two of the last five NCAA titles, and Dilanni said Washington and Oregon are hot spots for young talent in recruiting circles.
The Hawkeyes have recent history with the PAC-12 as well, having battled a then-nationally-ranked UCLA twice in the last five seasons.
Graduate student goalkeeper Macy Enneking was on hand for both of these contests and remembers the Bruins not just for their talent, but also their distinct style embodied by other teams on the West Coast.
“Midwest soccer is a lot more team-oriented, a lot more physical and gritty, whereas West Coast is a lot more of a direct play style,” she said. “I think they depend more on talent-based individuals. They’re very quick and fast up top, whereas I think Big Ten in particular focuses more on our defensive style of play and more build-up.”
Aside from his excitement, Dilanni said he had initial concerns with travel logistics but added that those feelings were relieved fairly quickly.
Even though he said he had no involvement in schedule-building outside of recommendations, Dilanni said he was satisfied with how the conference managed to coordinate 18 teams traveling cross-country.
Rather than making a trip to both coasts in the same year, the head coach explained how these long trips would alternate each year. For instance, the Hawkeyes venture to Rutgers this season but host Washington and Oregon, whereas next year, they head out to California for matchups against USC and UCLA.
For Dilanni, it’s important to keep perspective in conference expansion. After all, his first season at the helm was when Maryland and Rutgers joined the Big Ten. Although the opposition improves, the strategies don’t. If anything, they’re more amplified.
“You try to replicate as much as you can in the direction you’re going but also prepare your body to give yourself the best chance to succeed,” he said. “Hydration, nutrition, sleep patterns. All of those things matter.”
While it’s easy to view conference expansion through the lens of football, Olympic sports are still along for the ride, and Dilanni hopes that his team and others can receive some benefits.
“Certainly there’s a money element to why this expansion is happening, so you hope that you should see at least something in that context,” he said. “I’m pretty flexible and inclusive in how I think about things. As long as [the Big Ten] can take care of the scheduling and the money can be distributed to these athletes, then I think it can be a great thing.”