It’s been a year now since the Big Ten destabilized the entire structure of college sports with the acquisition of USC and UCLA. And if there is one thing that’s certain about this new era of uncertainty, it’s that more dominoes will tumble in the pending power conference struggle.

With the Big 12 outmuscling the Pac-12 for the No. 4 spot in the pecking order, the next wave of chaos will almost surely unleash from the West Coast.

That’s clearly the expectation in the Big Ten office. The B1G’s “Flex Protect Plus” football scheduling model that begins in 2024 is clever and nimble enough to facilitate future additions to the conference.

If every team was locked in to 3 annual rivalry games, you’d have to blow the whole thing up again if more teams are added. With the Big Ten’s plan, plugging in 2-4 additional teams can be done with minimal pain.

There are only 2 questions to consider: which schools will the B1G add, and when?

The latter question is impossible to answer at the moment. Theoretically it might not happen until summer 2030, when the league’s new multibillion-dollar media contract expires.

As for the who, there are 4 primary suspects: Oregon, Washington, Cal and Stanford — should the latter 2 commit to a future in major college athletics.

But perhaps the general public is sleeping on a pair of candidates that would actually make more sense.

There’s no need for the B1G to look to the distant Pacific Northwest. The league’s best potential future partners dwell in the desert.

The case for Arizona and Arizona State

Early June marked a watershed moment for Arizona State University.

The institution that prompted Ned Flanders to say, “Looks like heaven is easier to get into than Arizona State” became a Big Boy School.

Arizona State was admitted to the prestigious Association of American Universities. There are only 71 schools in the consortium, which is considered the creme de la creme of higher education. All of them teach you how to use phrases such as creme de la creme.

From a Big Ten perspective, it is a potentially massive development.

Each of the 16 schools that will comprise the B1G moving forward was an AAU member upon entry. (Nebraska has since dropped out of the AAU, which could probably be fodder for an Arizona State joke of some kind, but I do not have the talent to think of it.)

Though academics obviously aren’t at the forefront of conference realignment, they remain an important staple of Big Ten culture. And now Arizona State shares that commonality with Arizona, which has been an AAU member since 1985.

If the Arizona schools weren’t on the Big Ten’s radar before, they need to be now.

The biggest reason?

We know that the Big 12 is definitely desirous of both schools in addition to Utah and Colorado — the so-called “Four Corners” schools. (I use “so-called” because New Mexico is the other Four Corners state and I refuse to engage in Lobo erasure.)

And why should the Big Ten allow the Big 12 to swoop in on a valuable property first?

Media market size is no longer the end-all, be-all pushing conference expansion. But it’s hard to ignore the fact that Phoenix is the No. 11 media market in the country, putting it ahead of both Seattle (12th) and Portland (22nd).

If Arizona and Arizona State are combined with Cal and Stanford, the B1G adds 4 teams in the nation’s No. 10 and 11 markets. Outside of Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth, the Big 12 has no other inroads into the top 15.

Expansion has become a Machiavellian game. The B1G might as well play it as viciously as possible.

But this isn’t just about market size. The Arizona schools provide a cultural fit because Midwesterners are already there.

Heck, Arizona State is so quasi-Midwestern that it already has a hockey team. A hockey team that needs a conference home. And with 7 hockey-playing members, the B1G is a perfect home. Both sides benefit.

Midwestern snowbirds live in Arizona for the winter. Then they stay there once they’ve retired. Thousands of them are Big Ten alums. And they will turn out to see their schools play Arizona or Arizona State.

February and early March basketball games would be certain sellouts for the Wildcats and Sun Devils. There’s also plenty of potential for out-of-towners to combine a game with a trip to MLB spring training.

The Pacific Northwest is not bereft of Big Ten alums. But the footprint is certainly larger in Arizona. And that footprint is more likely to grow with the temporary boost of tourists in any given week.

This is where the B1G needs to be.

So, what of Oregon and Washington?

This turn of events would be a lousy development for Oregon and Washington. But hey, them’s the breaks in this dog-eat-dog environment.

There are a couple scenarios where the Ducks and Huskies aren’t left entirely in the cold, however.

Scenario 1: Cal and Stanford decide they want no part in this vision for college athletics. Oregon and Washington fill in their spots to make the Big Ten a Big Twenty.

However, I have a hard time seeing that happening. The money’s too good to pass up, especially given Cal’s fiscal challenges. Plus, UC-Berkeley and UCLA are legally attached to each other. It would make sense for their pending separation to be temporary.

Scenario 2: The Big 12 misses out on the southern half of the Three Corners. So, the only answer is to get even bigger.

Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark fancies Gonzaga as a basketball-only member. But it would make much more sense to combine the Zags with the whole PNW shebang. And that means not just a new home for Oregon and Washington, but Oregon State and Washington State. Wazzu and West Virginia fans are meant to be spiritually attached.

More or less, everyone goes home happy in this version of the Pac-12’s demise.

The B1G takes 4 — Arizona, Arizona State, Cal and Stanford.

The remaining 6 survivors head to the Big 12, because Corvallis and Pullman shouldn’t be punished for having agricultural schools. And Gonzaga actually makes sense as a Big 12 program with 4 nearby rivals.

No one is left behind except for the Pac-12 brand.

At this point, that outcome appears to be an inevitability. And the B1G should make sure it holds the best pieces when it does. That means including Arizona and Arizona State.