Tony Petitti isn’t interested in creating a better playoff. He wants to pack the bracket with his schools, damn the on-field results.
Remember all the thrilling games of the 2024-25 College Football Playoff? Texas’ two-overtime victory against Arizona State in the Peach Bowl! Notre Dame’s walkoff field goal to defeat Penn State in the Orange Bowl! And … and … hey, how about that Peach Bowl?
The sad truth about the debut of the expanded College Football Playoff was that from a competitive standpoint, it was pretty much a wet firework. Only two of the 11 games — those two above — finished with a one-possession margin of victory. Five of the games were decided by a margin of two touchdowns or more, and three were 20-plus-point blowouts. (Thanks for stopping by, SMU, Tennessee and Oregon.)
More, in other words, didn’t come anywhere near better. Yes, these were college football playoff games … but more importantly, they were inventory created to meet demand. And if people are going to buy as much of the product as you put on the shelves, what’s the incentive to limit that product? Why worry about quality when quantity is your overall goal?
College power conference leaders know this, which is why they’re angling so hard for representation in the CFP’s bracket — now at 12, almost certain to expand to 16. If — no, let’s be honest, when — that expansion comes, most conferences favor a 5+11 bracket. That would comprise five conference champions, 11 at-large teams, and would seem to be as meritocratic as possible: Play well and you’re in. (Win those winnable games, Alabama.)
But meritocracy isn’t the endgame here, aristocracy is. And so now you have Tony Petitti, Big Ten commissioner, backing a “4-4-2-2-1-3” idea, which would give the Big Ten and the SEC four automatic bids apiece, the Big 12 and the ACC two apiece, and the remaining conferences a single bid, with three more at-larges. (It’s like one of those ridiculous old word problems — “If the Big Ten gets four automatic berths in the playoffs, and the SEC gets four automatic berths … how can they screw the ACC and the Big 12 out of three more?”)
“At the end of the day, I think there’s been a lot of concern about how [the playoff selections] are made. I focus on that piece,” Petitti explained. “How are we differentiating from teams that don’t have head-to-head play, teams that don’t play common schedules across leagues that do different things? I think that’s a really hard, tall order.”
It’s quite the rhetorical trick Pettiti is playing there, saying that because his conference is so big, you can’t adequately determine strength by head-to-head matchups alone. And whose fault is that? It wasn’t the selection committee that expanded the Big “Ten” to 18 teams.
Petitti isn’t interested in creating a more equitable playoff, or in creating the conditions for better competition. He wants to pack the bracket with his schools, damn the optics or the on-field results. (Worth noting: the talent dropped off fast in the Big Ten after the top four last year. Would Iowa or Illinois, with their 6-3 conference records, be more deserving of an at-large spot than a whole range of other options? No.)
Petitti understands that there are spots that need to be filled — both now and in the 16-team playoff to come — and he wants those guaranteed for his conference, not subject to the whims of a playoff selection committee. But guaranteed bids are the very antithesis of “settle it on the field,” and run counter to literally every “you gotta earn it!” mantra preached by every coach from the beginning of time. It’s no surprise why the ACC and Big 12 hate the idea, and it’s also no surprise what’s driving the Big Ten’s push to claim as much inventory as possible.
We’re not exactly breaking news here to note that money trumps tradition at every single level of college sports now. Tradition only has value for universities, and especially for broadcast partners, to the extent it can be monetized. Yes, it’s wonderful that you can hum along to your alma mater’s fight song … but maybe you can kick in a few bucks to the ol’ athletic capital campaign while you’re at it? That rivalry you enjoyed your entire life … well, your rival just didn’t have deep enough pockets to join a new conference. Shame to lose that, really, but how about a replacement conference game against a school from halfway across the country? That’s almost as good, right?
Tradition has no place in the College Football Playoff. This is about inventory, plain and simple, and every business wants to create enough inventory to meet demand. Except here, instead of cereal boxes on a grocery shelf or burgers on a restaurant warming tray, the inventory in question is college football playoff games. Broadcasters want more inventory because each playoff game is a highly monetizable asset. Universities want more inventory because each nationally televised game means more exposure, more alumni goodwill, more broadcast dollars.
Fans might want more inventory because … well, more football is good football, right? Yeah, not so much. Sure, there’s always the chance that a Cinderella will knock out a Goliath, to mix literary metaphors, but given the wide variance between college football haves and have-lesses, the more likely outcome is what we saw last year: the big dogs carving right through the happy-to-be-here teams.
You know the best way to ensure competitive playoff games? Narrow the field down to the best four and let them have at it. Wild idea, right? We’re never going back there, meaning college football fans are now living a truth that plagues everything from pizza to music to Marvel movies: As quantity goes up, quality goes down.
Category: General Sports
