Clarity coming: UC Regents expected to rule soon on UCLA’s planned move to the Big Ten

UCLA’s life in limbo could soon come to an end.

The University of California Board of Regents is expected to decide whether to block the school’s planned move to the Big Ten when it gathers later this month at UC-San Francisco Mission Bay, according to sources with knowledge of the situation.

An attempt to prevent UCLA from leaving the Pac-12 in the summer of 2024 is considered unlikely.

However, the sources declined to guess how the regents might rule and cautioned that everything about the process is unpredictable, including the timing.

Exactly how an outcome would be reached, and be made public, is also unknown.

The next meeting is scheduled for Nov. 15-17, but the agenda hasn’t been posted on the regents’ website. As a result, it’s unclear if the decision would come in an open or closed session and whether the regents plan to vote on the matter.

What we do know is this: The regents have the authority to rescind the decision — and seemingly could do it without a vote or approval of the full board.

When UCLA announced the stunning news on June 30, it was believed that chancellor Gene Block had final authority over the school’s conference affiliation. That assumption proved incorrect.

During a meeting of the regents in August, general counsel Charlie Robinson indicated the governing board had the right to revoke a chancellor’s authority over conference affiliation.

“For this particular matter, the regents could say ‘We want to act and therefore we do not want the (UC) president or the (campus) chancellors to act in this area,’ and simply assert that,” Robinson said.

In a telling exchange, regent John Perez, who attended Cal, posed the following hypothetical to Robinson:

“Without noticing a meeting, without going to a meeting, between meetings, the board chair and the vice chair could act under interim action to retain an authority that had otherwise been delegated?”

“Correct,” Robinson said.

Legendary UCLA basketball player Bill Walton hopes the regents do just that.

On Tuesday, Walton broke four months of silence and announced his opposition to the move, which he believes is “about money” and runs counter to the missions of UCLA and the University of California.

“I do not see any common ground with UCLA and the Big Ten,” Walton said during a passionate explanation of his views on ‘Canzano and Wilner: The Podcast.’

Walton said he has voiced his displeasure to the regents and hopes they rescind the move. But he declined to speculate on the outcome.

“They’re not going to play their hand, certainly to me,” he said on the podcast. “Their discussions will be among themselves, and they then will have to make a collective decision and stand as one.

“There may be dissenting opinions. I don’t know how they handle the announcement of what they’re going to do if it’s not a unanimous decision.”