Welcome to an emergency edition of the Audible presented by Trader Joe's.

I'm Stuart Mandel, joined as always by Bruce Feldman.

Hey, when we last left off,

Bruce, silly me, naively, I said, well, I'm going to be out for a couple weeks, so see when I get back.

Ah, college sports, man. They always rope you back in. Right there, you're right there at the epicenter of conference realignment. Last year, the epicenter of conference realignment was Oklahoma, Texas. This year, it is Southern California,

USC and UCLA joining the Big Ten. How did this happen? Well, you know what's interesting,

Stu, especially living down here, knowing a bunch of USC people, there has been so much frustration

over the years. And I'm talking almost the whole time I know that I've lived out here,

but it feels like probably for at least about 15 years where it's like, why are we making the

we being USC? Why are we making the same amount of money as Oregon State and Washington State?

We're the ones who bring it.

You know, like that sentiment has come up a lot.

And obviously in the Big 12, where it was different, different money and there were different

tiers for rights.

And so Texas and OU were making a lot more than some of the other other programs in that conference.

But in this case, you know, a huge market USC.

And it's just a fascinating thing.

Like I think it had TV deals, as you know, the Big Ten TV deal, TV rights deal is coming up.

It just got a lot more attractive, right? Because now you have,

not just one, but two traditional, you know, second biggest media market in the country.

And unlike it with New York, I mean, USC is a huge presence. It's not like, you know, you

know what I'm saying with New York in the big pool. I mean, this is like a big, this is huge news out here in Los Angeles, especially.

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