An Open Letter To Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti: We Really Don't Want This

Dear Mr. Petitti,

Commissioner Petitti? Commish? Tony? Can I call you Tony? Tony feels right.

Hello. Hi. I'm a writer at this humble, upstart Big Ten sports blog. I'm technically the one with the sweater-wearing pugilistic otter as a profile picture and the stupid pun for a pseudonym. It's an honor to talk to the boss of largest and most lucrative college sports conference in the history of the world. You've had a pretty good run since starting in the job in May 2023: two national titles thanks to Michigan* in 2024 and Ohio State in 2025, plus the seamless introduction of the Pac-4 teams into our numerically challenged conference. Congrats! You must be riding high and have plenty of demands on your attention. I appreciate your time.

We're a month out from the 2025 football season, and last week you held court at the Big Ten Media Days in the quintessential Midwestern city of Las Vegas, Nevada. Since then, your proposal for the next iteration of the College Football Playoff system has been making the rounds. Put simply, you'd like to statutorily guarantee that at least 4 Big Ten teams, nearly a quarter of the 18 programs, make the CFP's 16-team bracket every single season. And in addition to the conference championship game between the B1G #1 and #2 teams, you're offering up play-in games for the remaining two slots. More games! As you've repeatedly stated, more "meaningful" games, games that while we the fans may not be excited for now, that the "fans will gravitate" to down the road.

I can see that you think that you're protecting the Big Ten's interests in the long term. We need to avoid the potential that some day down the road, some devious SEC athletic director would screw us out of a much-deserved CFP berth. I mean, look! It just happened to Florida State in 2023! I get it. You want to defend the chances of, as an example, the #6 team from 2024's Big Ten standings ability to make the CFP through the play-in game. As you noted: "If you’re 6-3 in the Big Ten, I would argue that’s a great record, and if you stumbled in a nonconference game, I don’t know why that disqualifies you. 8-4 as a winning percentage, if you project that winning percentage in every other sport, I’m pretty sure you make the postseason."

Let's look at that #6, 8-4 overall, 6-3 in conference squad from last year: 2024 Iowa. Iowa stumbled against a really good Iowa State team, but let's investigate that great 6-3 record in conference. A loss to eventual champ Ohio State is nothing to sneeze at (although I was at that game and it was a complete beatdown), but losses to 5-7 UCLA and 5-7 Michigan State, both rebuilding programs with brand-new coaches? Really? You want that version of Iowa, unranked in the AP Top 25, to potentially represent the Big Ten on the CFP stage?

There's only one reason why we would explicitly rig the system to benefit the Big Ten (and the SEC, although even they don't want this plan) above all others. There's only a single, solitary reason to build a system where 1/3 of the conference makes the play-in game. It's the money. It's always the money.

So here we reach the crux of the point. Tony, you came to the B1G HQ from the heights of CBS Sports' NFL coverage and from MLB Network, both solid and stolid professional sports institutions. But college sports aren't professional sports. And I don't mean that the players aren't paid; they are now. And not because free agency isn't a thing; it is. I know that college sports have begun to resemble the pro leagues more and more. But I can't get a Bachelor of Arts from the Chicago Cubs, I can't go to Psych 101 with the QB of the Chicago Bears. It is different, explicitly so. It is different. And perhaps you don't get that.

Tony, do you mind if we talk plainly, otter to man? I don't mean to besmirch your history in the industry, but I have to ask: Do you like collegiate sports? Do you even like college football? Plenty have asked this question of you. I'm certainly not the first. But we, the fans, have watched teams far beyond our humble Midwestern footprint join our little club purely for the TV rights. We've seen our sport become increasingly covered in ads and sponsorships and gambling promos, none of the money behind it going to the athletes themselves. We've stuck through the sport amidst all of this change and uncertainty due to our intensely, truly held fandom.

How long must we, the fans, eat shit?

We don't want this. We don't want the Big Ten domineering the college football landscape solely to rig the system for unranked Iowa's playoff hopes. We don't want it. We don't want more play-in games. We don't want a Champions League for the NCAA, one where the powerful teams can play powerful teams and the smaller schools can politely go fuck off. We, the fans, do actually "care about the tradition of it and all that," as you so eloquently put it. And burning those traditions to "get the next generation of fans to connect and have those moments, those opportunities," will destroy the sport as it has existed for one hundred years.

There is no sport as regional, as traditional, as hyper-local, as partisan and as storied and as beloved as college football. We want underdog upsets, we want traditional rivalries for silly ancient trophies, we want MACtion and noon games and an absurd number of punting yards. We want the Big Ten to thrive, to stick it to those "It Just Means More" SEC fans every goddamn year.

But what you're selling? Tony, we don't fucking want it.