Commissioner Tony Petitti defends CFP proposal with 4 automatic bids for Big Ten, SEC

New York Times

5 hours ago

Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti defended his proposal that his conference and the SEC should each receive four automatic bids to a 16-team College Football Playoff, but left room for other ideas, as part of a 30-minute conversation on Monday with Fox Sports' Joel Klatt.
Petitti, who had not previously publicly discussed CFP expansion or slotting this spring or summer, said his focus for automatic qualifiers is to encourage teams to compete in more challenging regular-season games and 'reduce the role of the committee.' Petitti's preferred plan would allow for two automatic qualifiers for both the ACC and the Big 12, plus one spot for the highest-ranked champion outside of the Power 4 conferences and three at-large teams.
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'The alternative to this system is expanding the field and giving the committee more to do,' Petitti told Klatt. 'If you go to 16 and you have 11 at-large, you've just added even more decision-making. The answer is, well, at that point, it gets to be easy, because you'll cover everybody. No, because the more spots you put into the system, the more difficult decisions you're facing.
'Teams start to look more alike, as we all have a tough road loss. Some of them may have stumbled at home in a tough conference game. The sequencing of when you play, you might be at a really difficult place, and then have to go on back home and play somebody else or be on the road for two weeks. That journey is really relevant. So, I think you make it harder.'
One year into a 12-team College Football Playoff, the tournament seems likely to expand to 16 teams for the 2026-27 season. The Big Ten and SEC have the control to reshape the upcoming system, which was granted by other conferences through a memorandum of understanding last year.
The Big Ten and SEC trended toward approving what's called the 4+4+2+2+1 plan, until conference meetings in May. Officials and coaches from the ACC, Big 12 and SEC touted a plan for five conference champions and 11 at-large teams in a 16-team field. It was the first time the SEC and Big Ten appeared on opposite sides of constructing a new CFP model. The CFP must inform ESPN/ABC by Dec. 1 whether it plans to stay at 12 teams beginning in 2026 or expand.
With significant differences in scheduling — the Big Ten and Big 12 have nine league games, the SEC and ACC each play eight — and little crossover in nonconference games, Petitti wants each conference to determine which teams qualify for the CFP. That's why he wants to set up three CFP play-in games. In the Big Ten, both championship participants would qualify, as would the winner of games between No. 3 and No. 6 and between No. 4 and No. 5. Last year, the play-in games would have involved Iowa at Indiana and Illinois at Ohio State.
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'It just is a way to also normalize your conference schedule, because it really is hard to sometimes tell the difference among our own teams,' Petitti said. 'A lot of times they don't play each other.
'Look at Ohio State last year. Ohio State lost two Big Ten conference games. Technically, they finished fourth in the conference at 7-2. By the end of the playoff run, they were clearly the best team in the country. So, I think it's an indication of, it's hard to figure this stuff out during the course of the season.'
If conferences choose their own CFP qualifiers, Petitti said leagues will set up better nonconference matchups among the power conferences.
'The goal is to play more nonconference games, because if you're qualifying for the CFP off your conference record, and then a play-in game, the fact that you play a tough SEC or ACC or Big 12 team and maybe get beat on the road, or whatever the result is, that might impact your seeding down the road, but it's not going to impact your access,' Petitti said. 'There's three at-larges, so yeah, it does a little bit. But at the end of the day, that loss isn't fatal.'