A little over a week ago, new Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti told the press assembled at Big Ten Media Days that the league was not focused on further expansion but on further developing plans to integrate USC and UCLA into the Big Ten when they join in 2024. It turns out they're going to have some company when they join the league next year -- on Friday, around 13 months after USC and UCLA bolted from the Pac 12 to the Big Ten, multiple reports indicated that Washington and Oregon are also leaving the Pac 12 and joining the Big Ten.

The departures by Oregon and Washington were preceded by Colorado opting to leave the Pac 12 and return to its old home in the Big 12. As it happens, Colorado won't be the only former Pac 12 school in the Big 12, either -- news emerged later on Friday that Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah will all be moving from the Pac 12 to the Big 12 as well.

These moves leave the Big Ten and Big 12 as nation-sprawling mega-conferences with at least 16 teams, joining the 16-team SEC (when it officially adds Texas and Oklahoma to its ranks in 2024). The additions of Oregon and Washington actually give the Big Ten 18 teams, making it the largest FBS conference. Fun fact: it's been 30 years (1993) since the Big Ten actually included just 10 teams.

The moves also leave the Pac 12 ripped to shreds and with just four remaining schools: Cal, Stanford, Washington State, and Oregon State. Cal and Stanford have also been linked with a possible move to the Big Ten, though the likelihood of that move happening now is unclear.

While Oregon and Washington will be joining USC and UCLA as new Big Ten members in 2024, they will only be receiving partial shares of the conference allotment (which primarily consists of the league's media rights deals), unlike the Trojans and Bruins. The Ducks and Huskies will receive partial shares through the expiration of the league's current media rights deal (negotiated after the Big Ten added USC and UCLA, but well before today's addition of Washington and Oregon).

Obviously, a lot of details remain to be worked out with the addition of two more west coast-based schools to the Big Ten. The football schedule information for 2024 and 2025 -- which included the planned home and away opponents for each season -- will need to be scrapped and a new scheduling model devised to account for the addition of Washington and Oregon.

The model the Big Ten had settled upon afforded each team 1-3 protected opponents and featured an opponent rotation that ensured that every school would play every other league opponent at least twice (home and away) in a four-year span. It's unclear if the addition of Oregon and Washington will result in a substantial shake-up to that model.

It doesn't seem likely that the Big Ten would return to a divisional model after previously announcing plans to scrap divisions after the 2023 season, but the addition of Oregon and Washington could help address the biggest issue with the previous East-West divisional alignment: the lack of competitive balance. Or, rather, the lack of sufficient balance at the top of the divisions -- the best of the West routinely struggled against the powerhouses from the East like Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State. In theory, a West division anchored by USC, Oregon, and Washington might be able to provide stronger opposition to the league's Eastern powers.

Still, there will be plenty of time to sort out the details of the new-look Big Ten over the next 12 months. Today is a watershed moment for college sports -- it's not often that you get to witness the death of a Power 5 conference in real time. The Pac 12's immediate future is unclear, although with just four remaining members (as of this writing) it technically doesn't even meet the minimum membership requirements to be certified as a conference by the NCAA. Its ability to try and poach teams from the Mountain West Conference for the 2024 season will be hampered by a $32 million exit fee that any MWC schools would be required to pay if they leave before the start of the 2025 season.

Aside from the Pac 12 itself, the biggest casualty from today's moves is probably the Rose Bowl. The Grandaddy of 'Em All has clung to its traditions with as much tenacity as possible over the decades, even as the sport gradually drifted toward a national playoff model. One of the most hallowed of those traditions was of course the match-up of Big Ten and Pac 12 champions in the Rose Bowl in a late-afternoon kickoff on New Year's Day. That tradition will be shattered with the Pac 12 now set to be (at best) irrelevant or (at worst) nonexistent.

EDIT: Per ESPN, the traditional Rose Bowl match-up was dead before today's events anyway, with the Rose Bowl agreeing to become a cog in the expanded College Football Playoff. Today's effective dissolution of the Pac 12 essentially just underlines the demise of the traditional Rose Bowl match-up.

There will be more to say about these moves in the coming days, weeks, and months, especially as details emerge about how an 18-team Big Ten will function. For now, though the takeaway is this: the already-sprawling Big Ten is getting even bigger.