Big Ten commish says a 24-team playoff would make regular season more meaningful, not less

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. (AP) — 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 Southeastern Conference 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.

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.

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 be a 12-team affair. The deadline to decide about 2027 is Dec. 1.

Such a big 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 TV partners.

All would be worth the work, Petitti insisted.

“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,” he said.

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