IOWA CITY, Iowa — With the Big Ten barely four weeks removed from accepting Washington and Oregon as new members, University of Iowa president Barbara Wilson said she “can’t comment” on whether the league is complete at 18 members.
“What I can tell you is that we’re not making any decisions quickly,” Wilson told members of her Presidential Committee on Athletics on Thursday. “But we’re thinking deeply about the issues at hand, and we’re not making decisions to chase dollars right now. So even though it looks that way to some of our critics, that’s not what we’re doing.”
Friday morning, Stanford and California (along with SMU) were accepted as Atlantic Coast Conference members for the 2024 season. Both schools were discussed as potential Big Ten targets alongside Oregon and Washington, but one industry source told The Athletic they don’t think commissioner Tony Petitti “had the votes” to add Stanford and Cal. “So there was never really a big push for the other two,” the source added.
A Big Ten school source said there’s respect for both schools’ academic prowess, but the league’s institutions interact with Cal and Stanford through the Association of American Universities, a prestigious research consortium. So there was no urgency to add…
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