BLOOMINGTON — The Big Ten's road to 18 teams went through Bloomington.

Or to be more precise, it went through Indiana athletic director Scott Dolson's third floor office in the North End Zone of Memorial Stadium.

New Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti was the driving force in adding Oregon and Washington, but Indiana's AD played a key role in the process as chair of the Big Ten's athletic directors' group. It's a one-year appointment that rotates alphabetically among the league’s athletic directors.

Illinois athletic director Josh Whitman preceded Dolson and handed off the role on June 30.

“It was a fascinating experience,” Dolson said. “I felt really good that I was a small, small part of a process to help get it done.”

Scott Dolson was in constant communication with league's ADs

Petitti looked relaxed as he took the podium during the conference’s media days on July 23 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

It was Petitti’s first appearance at the annual event in his current role.

He fielded questions on all the hot button issues: from Northwestern’s hazing scandal to name, image and likeness to the transfer portal and another round of possible conference expansion.

Petitti didn’t have much to say on the latter topic.

The first-year commissioner said the league was excited about moving forward as a 16-team league with USC and UCLA set to become members in 2024.

“I'm not getting direction to do anything else other than that in terms of just what the conference looks like right now,” Petitti said.

The Big Ten voted to add Oregon and Washington eight days later.

“Schools reach out to the conference and it happens quickly, you have to be prepared to be nimble and assemble the right people together to determine how we are going to evaluate this opportunity,” Dolson said, in a sit down interview with The Herald Times.

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The Big Ten had done much of its due diligence on the pros and cons of adding Oregon and Washington the previous year, but there was still debate to be had amongst the athletic directors and university presidents about the best path forward.

Dolson said the nature of his job as an administrator means he lives on his cell phone, but that attachment reached new levels during that eight-day stretch after Big Ten media days.

“Tony relied on me because he can't call every AD," Dolson said. "It's happening so fast, you just can't."

Pettit would feed the latest information to Dolson and he would pass it on to his fellow athletic directors and get their feedback.

“I can give him a feel for what I think are their priorities, what are the things going on, how everyone will react to this, to try to give him that feedback as he's trying to gather that information as he works with the presidents,” Dolson said.

He described it as a period of “constant communication” amongst the group given the deadline Oregon and Washington faced as the Pac-12 worked to keep its conference together by voting on a new television deal.

While the vote for league expansion is ultimately up to the league’s presidents, the athletic directors help keep them informed.

COVID-19 pandemic brought Big Ten athletic directors into closer orbit

Dolson’s not sure things would have gone as smoothly as they did if it wasn’t for how the COVID-19 pandemic forced the conference’s athletic directors to work more closely together.

He remembered how his predecessor Fred Glass met with his fellow athletic directors three or four times a year at most.

During the heights of the pandemic, the Big Ten’s athletic directors had daily Zoom meetings to discuss the latest developments.

“You met every day for a year at eight in the morning and maybe just take off Sundays,” Dolson said. “I think that the rapid pace of that, and the decisions we were having to make helped prepare us…The reality is the decision to expand and all that happened in a two week period really wasn't a fire alarm.”

Dolson admits his perspective might be a little skewed since he took over in the midst of a full-fledged five alarm fire.

He was named athletic director on March 17, 2020, five days after the NCAA tournament was canceled and the Big Ten shut down all sports. Things really haven’t slowed down since with the conference grappling with NIL, negotiating a new media rights deals and the USC-UCLA expansion.

“When you go through crisis or crazy times, it can separate people or bring them together,” Dolson said. “This is a close knit group."

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Dolson has grown close with Purdue athletic director Mike Bobinski during that time — ”people would think IU and Purdue are just the biggest rivals ever, Mike has been unbelievable” — and described outgoing Ohio State athletic director Geno Smith playing an important role as the “dean” of the Big Ten’s athletic directors.

There’s still work to be done particularly related to conference scheduling, but Dolson is excited about the conference's direction and know they will get through any of the challenges that arise given the leadership's "forward-looking" vision.

“I think it's huge for Indiana, it's huge for us and huge for student-athletes' experience,” Dolson said. “That's what it's all about. I think our student-athletes are excited."

Michael Niziolek is the Indiana beat reporter for The Bloomington Herald-Times. You can follow him on Twitter @michaelniziolek and read all his coverage by clicking here.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Indiana's Scott Dolson had a role in Big Ten adding Oregon, Washington