Ohio State women’s volleyball coach Jen Flynn Oldenburg still views herself as a purist.
She looks back fondly at her days as the Buckeyes’ setter, playing in a Big Ten when 11 teams played a true round-robin schedule, battling Friday and Saturday nights against a consistent rotation of opponents.
But Oldenburg also describes herself as a realist, ready to adapt to whatever is necessary to compete in the larger world of college athletics. And to her, that path is clear.
“It is expansion,” she said.
To Oldenburg, Ohio State is fortunate. It’s not the school that is moving. The majority of its teams’ traveling still remains mostly on one side of the country even with the Big Ten adding Oregon, Southern California, UCLA and Washington in 2024.
But change is coming.
The addition of four Pac-12 teams to the Big Ten will increase the conference’s TV revenue share with the schools, helped by the popularity of football and basketball.
It’s a change that sports including women’s volleyball, track and field, and baseball are being forced to respond to, facing questions regarding conference play and travel with the integration of four West Coast teams.
“I don’t think there was any consideration for our sport. And that’s not a knock that it should have been,” said Rosalind Joseph, Ohio State director of track and field and cross country. “I just don’t think that ‘What is track and field, and cross country going to do?’ I don’t think that ever came up, and where we benefit.
“I’m glad I’m not in the athletic director’s chair (or) the commissioner’s chair.”
What Big Ten expansion means for travel
When it comes to travel, Ohio State baseball coach Bill Mosiello has a “glass-half-full” mentality.
“Growing up in California, I think it’s neat to see other parts of the country,” Mosiello said. “A California kid never would have been able to see Columbus, Ohio, or East Lansing.”
After the Big Ten announced the additions of Oregon and Washington to the conference, joining USC and UCLA, many Pac-12 athletes spoke out about mental health concerns with the increased travel schedules, including the aspect of many athletes having to play farther away from their families.
For Oldenburg, travel is a concern, especially for Ohio State sports that play more than one game per week. Ahead of 2024, she said the conversation revolves around making sure that the Buckeyes’ West Coast travel schedule “makes sense.”
“They are going to be very creative and I think intentional with how they schedule, so that we do take into account what does this mean for the student athletes because they still have to be students,” Oldenburg said.
West Coast travel is something Lisa Strom has faced both as an Ohio State women’s golf team member and as its head coach, regularly scheduling nationally, including an annual trip to Palos Verdes Golf Club outside of Los Angeles for the Therese Hession Regional Challenge in honor of the Buckeyes’ former women’s golf coach.
“Is it taxing on the student athlete? Yes,” Strom said. “But what I remind them all the time, if you have your heart set on playing professional golf and chasing your dreams on the LPGA Tour … you’re going to be doing a lot of travel. … We really don’t have any issues academically to speak of, so it’s just one of those things that it’s the nature of our sport to get on airplanes and travel and maybe have to get off an airplane (and) go to class in a couple hours after we drop you off.”
Ohio State welcomes West Coast competition
For most Ohio State coaches, the competition Washington, USC, UCLA and Oregon will bring to the Big Ten is not an issue.
It’s welcomed, Mosiello said, knowing the potential those programs have to help make the Big Ten a more renowned baseball conference, while also expanding the Buckeyes’ recruiting footprint.
“I didn’t feel like just Ohio kids and just Midwest kids could help us win a championship, win a national championship,” Mosiello said. “They would help us tremendously and there’s some great ones, but I actually took it just like the football team. You have to start in your backyard, but you have to get a C.J. Stroud from California and you get some speed guys from Florida. That was my thought process baseball wise: ‘That’s what we’re going to do.’
“Because of the strong brand of Ohio State, I knew that anybody you call from all around the country, they’ve heard of Ohio State. And our goal is to start making that they heard of it because of the success of the baseball program.”
Questions remain regarding conference championships and qualifications for NCAA tournaments, and whether those formats need to be shifted with an additional four teams.
And even if the road to those championships becomes tougher for programs like Ohio State women’s volleyball, Oldenburg said the tougher conference schedule will only help her team.
“In terms of what we want to accomplish here and winning championships, does it get more challenging? Yes, but it makes us better,” she said. “For us to win a national championship, I think that prep work during the conference is only going to make you tougher when the time comes in December.”
Ohio State wrestling coach Tom Ryan has more questions than answers regarding his sport’s role in expansion.
None of the four Pac-12 teams joining the Big Ten have Division I wrestling programs, something Ryan called “a concern,” even as the sport is “booming” and gaining traction from a spectator standpoint, calling wrestling “a top three or four (most) watched sport” on Big Ten Network.
“When you have 80, maybe 82 programs left (in Division I), every one of them matters,” Ryan said. “Wrestling could explode if these schools add wrestling. It can really explode. If it doesn’t, if they don’t add wrestling, it’s an interesting time.”
While none of the four West Coast schools offer Division I wrestling or hockey, many Big Ten schools also do not offer sports such as beach volleyball or water polo, which many Pac-12 teams have.
‘Ohio State was going to always be in the center’
For Strom, the upcoming expansion is all about trust.
Strom says she has to practice what she preaches to her players, expecting them to trust that each decision she makes is for the betterment of the team as a whole. Now, with expansion, she’s in the same boat.
“They have conversations I’ll never understand and I don’t understand all the media rights,” Strom said. “I guess what I do understand is that they feel it’s going to benefit our conference, going to benefit our universities and trickle down to benefiting our staffs and our student athletes. At the end of the day, that’s where you’re going to have a lot of trust in what we’re doing at Ohio State.”
While there was no set plan for after expansion was confirmed, Joseph said Ohio State’s athletic department is actively seeking input from all of its sports about how to proceed with four more teams in the Big Ten.
“It’s also been a good opportunity to also sort of have our own input in what do we think it should look like, what are some of struggles and some of the advantages,” Joseph said. “While we haven’t quite gotten together to have those conversations, that is what we’re being asked to look into: how will this help in or impact your sport?”
But in the middle of all the change and rumors of further expansion swirling, Mosiello knows one thing: Ohio State is stable — a reality that made him pick the Buckeyes in the first place.
“When I chose a place like Ohio State, you just knew that Ohio State’s never going anywhere,” he said. “I mean, like somebody’s going to want them always. So you felt safe, like ‘I feel bad for all the other schools and what’s going to happen here, happen there,’ but you knew Ohio State was going to always be in the center.”
