There is usually a process to conference expansion that starts with rumors, innuendo, denials, and eventually leaked negotiations but instead, moving with a speed and coordination unheard of at universities unless it is to quash a graduate student union, the Big Ten suddenly includes UCLA and USC. A conference so midwestern that its initial network programming was sponsored entirely by extra large men's pants and a can of vegetables to throw in liquid cheese now bestrides both coasts for some reason and is reborn as the Enormous Ten.
There was a time when a move like this would seem like a titanic upheaval but titanic upheaval is now the only register in which big money college sports operates.