How many teams are in the Big Ten? Exploring conference re-alignment plans of Tony Petitti

The Big Ten has been active in conference re-alignment and expansion plans. It's already one of the best college football conferences, featuring premier programs like Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State among others.

Although the Southeastern Conference remains the top conference, the Big Ten is doing its best to challenge itself to be the best. The Big Ten recently added USC and UCLA as they will be joining the conference for the 2024 college football season.

The Big Ten now has 14 teams, but that will increase to 16 once USC and UCLA join the conference. With the two West Coast teams, there will be a lot more travel for the Big Ten, but the two teams will only make the conference a premier one in college sports.

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Is the Big Ten done expanding?

Michigan and Ohio State are two of the top teams in the Big Ten.

At this point, it seems likely that the Big Ten will continue to add more teams, despite having 16 starting next year.

Recently, Barstool Sports' Jack McGuire reported that four teams are likely to be added to the conference this week. Those are set to be Washington, Oregon, Florida State and Clemson, which would be a massive win for the future of the Big Ten, potentially making them the best conference in college football.

However, if the Big Ten does add more teams, it would present more challenges for scheduling. Nevertheless, commissioner Tony Petitti reckons that's something they have already talked about.

"All the direction I'm getting from leadership — our presidents and chancellors and our athletic directors — is to focus on USC and UCLA," Tony Petitti said when asked about the potential for additional expansion.

He added:

"We have a lot of work to do there. I'm proud of the scheduling format we created in football. I think it touches on all the right things. But we have significant work to do in scheduling for our other sports, especially our olympic sports, to come up with the best solutions.

"We have a good plan in motion. I think we'll learn from it. Like anything, there'll be tweaks and changes. But overall, that's really where we are. I'm not getting direction to do anything else other than that in terms of what the conference looks like right now."

For now, it appears that the Big Ten is not done adding teams and could even get up to 20 in the near future.