Urban Meyer was 'very surprised' when UCLA, USC joined Big Ten, left Pac-12

Former Ohio State (and Jacksonville Jaguars) head coach Urban Meyer, now re-upped as an analyst for Fox’s college football coverage this season, spoke with Outkick’s Dan Dakich on Tuesday about his surprise at USC and UCLA bolting for the Big Ten from the Pac 12.

Meyer said he couldn’t have envisioned this sort of realignment 20 years ago, and was quite shocked to see two of the biggest brands in the Pac 12 just up leave. Meyer lamented that not that long ago, the Pac 12 was perceived as one of the big dogs of college football.

“I was very surprised,” Meyer said. “I heard rumblings about it but I just can’t imagine the Pac 12 without those two schools. You remember — and Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush are part of the Fox team — there was a time when the Pac 12 was one of, maybe the most difficult conference in the country. When I was growing up it was Pete Carroll and you know, shoot before that Larry Smith, Terry Donahue. You had Arizona State, Washington winning a national title. You had great — you still have great programs. It’s hard to imagine the two flagship universities are out. What happens to the other Pac 12 teams?”

As Meyer noted, two of his Fox colleagues were once the two most recognizable faces from one of college football’s best teams of the 2000s. And illustrative of Meyer’s point, they were also on the last team from the Pac 12 to win a national title, the 2004 USC Trojans. Since then, the titles have been won by the SEC (12), ACC (3), Big Ten (Ohio State in 2014), and the Big 12 (Texas in 2005).

Meyer wondered about what would happen to the remaining teams.

“I think Chris Peterson said it best,” Meyer said, “and I know we spent some time out there in California together recently. You know what happens, is the trickle down affect going to take place out west? Will that impact high school football? Will it impact the interest level in football in the west? And like I was saying a few minutes ago, there was a time when the west coast had as good of football or better than most teams in the country. And it’s so hard to imagine, you wake up one day, Texas isn’t playing Texas A&M, Arkansas is out of the Big 12 or the Southwest Conference, Nebraska is in some different conference. Now you have these other two jumping ship. It’s just too hard to even envision — 20 years ago if you had said this was going to happen, it’d be ‘No way.'”