Oregon has officially accepted an invitation to the Big Ten Conference. The school’s board of trustees unanimously approved the move. The Big Ten extended the invitation. Done deal.
Speaking of done: The Pac-12 appears to be done as well, given there are hardly any schools left to cobble together a conference. The Pac-12 has been picked clean, down to the bone. It’s very hard to imagine Stanford and Washington State inviting UNLV, Rice, Fresno State, Tulane, New Mexico, and Wyoming to be part of a lower-tier Pac-10 with Cal and Oregon State.
For Oregon, this move is a lot like USC’s move to the Big Ten a year ago. The move was done for money and stability. The Ducks escaped a sinking ship. They didn’t genuinely want to leave the Pac-12, but they had to. USC had to last year. USC got this process started. Oregon joined the Big Ten on the back end and in a more urgent situation, with the Pac-12 about to die. That’s an obvious difference between the two schools. Yet, in the end, both UO and USC realized the Pac-12 was a clown-car conference and had to be left behind.
You can imagine how wild X, formerly known as Twitter, was during all of this. Here is a small sampling of the many memes, jokes, and official statements which flew across social media when the Ducks flew to their Big Ten new home: