The Big Ten, led by Tony Petitti, spent the offseason concocting absurd College Football Playoff proposals.
A 28-team playoff would increase television inventory, but devalue college football’s regular season.
Imagine unranked teams making the playoff. That’s the Big Ten’s latest idea.
The conference that once held itself aloft as a beacon of all things good and honorable about college athletics is now considering making a mockery of the College Football Playoff.
The Big Ten, led commissioner Tony Petitti, has jumped the shark.
Instead of capitalizing on the momentum of back-to-back national championships, the Big Ten spent the offseason concocting absurd College Football Playoff plans, with its latest idea even zanier than the last.
PATH TO PLAYOFF: Sign up for our college football newsletter
Petitti just will not rest until he gets every 8-4 Big Ten team into the playoff. His latest playoff idea, according to multiple reports, would expand the playoff to as many as 28 teams and include as many as seven automatic bids apiece for the Big Ten and SEC, with additional automatic bids for other leagues.
We’ve now zoomed past 8-4 Iowa toward an even lower rung on the totem pole for playoff mediocrity. Welcome to the playoff hunt, 7-5 Rutgers!
This idea doesn’t count as radical. It’s ridiculous.
Big Ten damages credibility in offseason of bad ideas
They say you are the company you keep. Well, Petitti spent the past few months keeping company with – and breathing life into – stupid ideas. He previously failed to gain support for his attempt to rig the playoff with a 16-team format that would have reserved four automatic bids for his conference and four more for the SEC. When that plan failed to gain traction, the Big Ten upped the ante by socializing this idea to shoehorn unranked teams into the playoff.
Petitti’s expanded playoff plans would increase television inventory, but at what cost? Growing the playoff to 28 teams would cheapen the regular season. That cannot be the end game.
A 28-team playoff does nothing for the Big Ten’s upper crust, either. Ohio State doesn’t need this. Neither does Michigan, not when it can cheat its way to glory. Oregon couldn’t win one playoff game, so now the solution is to shove the Big Ten’s champion into a 28-team maze?
When Petitti arrived on the college sports scene in 2023, he brought with him a Harvard law degree and a background as a television executive. He began his tenure overseeing the additions of Oregon and Washington to solidify the Big Ten’s western flank. A fine start. Since then, he’s moved to the back of the class and tarnished his credibility while raising his hand with goofy playoff suggestions, while his SEC counterpart, Greg Sankey, retains his grip on the king’s scepter.
Can Big Ten and SEC find a compromise to expand playoff?
Let’s assume there’s something behind this latest plan for playoff gluttony other than a desire to make the Big Ten a magnet for criticism.
What other motivation might the Big Ten have? Well, by floating a plan more ludicrous the last, the Big Ten might hope to reignite conversations toward a compromise.
Oh, so you don’t like a 28-team playoff that invites 7-5 Big Ten teams? OK, let’s make a deal!
Just one problem with that. Petitti remains intent on reducing the playoff selection committee’s role, in favor of a preassigning a bundle of automatic bids, but the SEC doesn’t seem too interested in making a deal toward playoff plans bloated with multiple automatic bids for conferences it believes are inferior.
The SEC backpedaled from Petitti’s past plan to rig a 16-team playoff with a stacked deck of automatic bids. The SEC’s coaches turned their eye toward a 5+11 playoff model that would add four additional at-large bids to the 12-team current playoff format. The Big 12 and ACC support the 5+11 plan.
The Big Ten stands in objection to the 5+11 model, in part because the ACC and SEC play one fewer conference game than the Big Ten. The Big Ten’s pushback on conference scheduling is not without merit, but it lacks the power to bring the SEC and ACC to heel on its scheduling.
Expanding the playoff would require the SEC and Big Ten to align behind a model. If they cannot agree on a new format, that would prolong the runway for the current model.
“The Big Ten has a different view (of what’s good for playoff expansion),’ Sankey said in July. ‘That’s fine. We have a 12-team playoff. … That could stay if we can’t agree.’
If you think Sankey’s bluffing about persisting with the current model, consider he was one of the architects of the 12-team playoff. He dubbed the first year of the expanded playoff “a success,” even though the SEC did not advance a team to the national championship game. The offseason tweak to introduce straight seeding benefits the SEC. There’s no reason for the SEC to rush to abandon this format.
The selection committee historically values the SEC. The more at-large bids, the better, for the SEC.
Maybe, Petitti believes flooding the zone with zany ideas will spur the SEC toward a suitable compromise. There’s another possibility, though. With each half-baked playoff idea, the Big Ten and its leader further diminish their credibility, and the opportunity for playoff expansion absorbs a gut punch.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.