Big Ten commish says 24-team playoff would make regular season more meaningful, not less
Meeting with reporters at the Big Ten spring meetings in Rancho Palos Verdes, Tony Petitti says he’s surprised he keeps having to explain his opinion to a stout group of critics who favor a smaller expansion.
Big Ten Conference commissioner Tony Petitti is surprised that he has to keep explaining his stance that expanding the College Football Playoff from 12 to 24 teams would make the regular season more meaningful, not less. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)
Eddie Pells (AP) — RANCHO PALOS VERDES, CA — Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti painted his conference’s 24-team College Football Playoff proposal as a way of making the regular season more meaningful – not less – and said he’s surprised he keeps having to explain that to a stout group of critics who favor a smaller expansion.
“When I was in baseball, we never had to convince people that keeping more people in the race is better for everybody,” Petitti, who helped shepherd in playoff expansion when he was with Major League Baseball from 2008-20, said Tuesday. “But I feel like, in this space, we’re being asked to do that.”
Petitti met with reporters on the second day of the league’s spring meetings. He spelled out the reasoning behind the push for a 24-team playoff and projected a sense of unanimity among his coaches and athletic directors in favor of doubling the tournament from its current 12-team format.
He once again said there was no real love in his league for what the SEC prefers – a move to 16 teams that, under one scenario, would put every playoff team in action on the first week.
“I don’t understand the motivation to play a championship game without a bye,” he said.
But, Petitti asked, if leagues got rid of the title games, then in a 16-team format that adds only two games to the playoffs, “what’s the economics” to make up what he estimates is $200 million in revenue the Power Four conferences would lose?
Over the past few weeks, both the Atlantic Coast and Big 12 conferences have said they would prefer a move to 24 teams. “There is a deep commitment to 24,” Petitti said.
In what might have been the week’s biggest eye-opener, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said on “The Paul Finebaum Show” that at his own league meetings in Florida next week, he expects “a lot of our coaches, a lot of our athletic directors and probably some others (will) think 24 is the right direction.”
That would mark a seismic shift from where the SEC has been for the past year.
Sensing the gulf between the SEC and his own league – the two conferences that must agree to a change – Petitti said the Big Ten shifted away from a model with multiple automatic qualifiers to one that would place 23 at-large teams selected by the committee into the new bracket, with one slot reserved for a Group of 6 program.
Games in the first two rounds would be played on campus. Early rounds played on home campuses would deliver substantial local ticket sales, concessions, and merchandise revenue directly to the hosting universities, departing from neutral-site bowl games.
Petitti said the system created enough “tiers” – with eight first-round byes, eight more first-round home games and the last eight spots going to teams simply looking for a playoff berth – to generate interest in regular-season games across the country, and down to the wire.
“I don’t get why we can’t have a Minnesota-Iowa game have a big impact every so often – or every year, actually,” Petitti said.
Because the leagues haven’t been able to agree, the upcoming season’s playoff will still be a 12-team affair. The ESPN deadline to decide about 2027 is Dec. 1.
Such a large single move literally doubling-expansion would involve a huge amount of logistical maneuvering, most important of which would be figuring out what to do with conference title games and selling the 12 new playoff games to the lucrative bidding block of TV partners such as Fox, ESPN, ABC, TNT, CBS and NBC. This would trigger massive new television contracts and ad revenue to help pay for radically increasing costs.
The bottom line: the college sports industry needs the money. Since we’re finally paying players a lot — and since we’re doing so while continuing to allow coaches’ salaries and buyouts to rapidly escalate — athletic directors are desperate to increase revenue wherever possible.
Expanding the CFP from four to 12 teams added more than $700 million in annual college sports revenue, but everyone needs even more, and no one wants the boosters who are writing the big checks to feel unrewarded.
“I don’t understand the basic premise that more games that have an impact or keep you in the hunt isn’t the right thing to do,” Petitti insisted.
And as ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips said last week, “If you’re going to ask presidents and chancellors and boards to continue to invest in their football programs, it’s really important that they have hope, that they have an opportunity at the beginning of the season to get into the playoff.”
According to a memorandum of understanding that the conferences and Notre Dame signed in March 2024, the Big Ten and SEC must agree on a future playoff format for it to be adopted. SEC administrators gather next week near Destin, Florida, for their version of their annual spring meetings.
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In what might have been the week’s biggest eye-opener, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said on “The Paul Finebaum Show” that at his own league meetings in Florida next week, he expects “a lot of our coaches, a lot of our athletic directors and probably some others (will) think 24 is the right direction.”
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