Latest news with #TonyPetitti
New York Times
4 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
Confused about the College Football Playoff auto-bid debate? Look to the Champions League
The English Premier League entered the final day of its season with a unique kind of drama that might soon make its way to college football. First place had been decided a month ago, and the group of clubs being relegated to the second-tier league had already been set. Last Saturday's intrigue concerned who would qualify for the Champions League, with five teams battling for three unclaimed spots. Advertisement Stakes like this could be the future of college football if Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti gets his wish. A few years ago, I spoke with The Athletic's European soccer writers about how college football was more similar to their sport than to the NFL. It remains true today. Teams don't draft players; they recruit and sign them. Big teams take players from small teams. Teams are rooted specifically in their community and can't relocate. And rumblings about a Super League face pushback as the sport's richest and most powerful organizations solidify their place at the top without a formal breakaway from the current structure. The similarity between the two sports might soon include the championship tournament. When colleague Stewart Mandel notes that no major American sport guarantees more automatic playoff spots to certain groups than college football, he's right. But the emphasis is on American. The UEFA Champions League, which will hold its final on Saturday when Inter Milan takes on Paris Saint-Germain in Munich, gives out an uneven number of automatic bids to each country's domestic league. There will be 82 teams across 53 European countries in next year's tournament. The top five leagues are guaranteed four spots. The sixth league gets three, the seventh- through 15th-ranked leagues get two, and everyone else gets one. The ranking of those soccer leagues is determined by a formula that calculates how well teams from that league performed in the previous season's European competitions, and the bids handed out to each country are determined by domestic league standings. This is essentially what the Big Ten has proposed (and the SEC hasn't yet pushed back on) for the next round of College Football Playoff expansion, just with fewer leagues and the bid allotments locked in for conferences. The proposed '4-4-2-2' split of automatic qualifiers (AQs) among the Power 4 does roughly mirror the leagues' past decade of Playoff participation. Advertisement 'The idea that (soccer leagues) understand, they don't have a committee determining that,' Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin said this week. 'They've been able to objectively, through results and their standings, allot those opportunities. I think there's something there that we can learn from, and that's what the AQ conversation ties back to.' Whether you like anything about this idea is a separate question, but the Big Ten's CFP idea is rooted partly in what happens across the pond. Driving the plan is the idea that the regular-season standings will determine who makes the field, rather than a human committee. In particular, the SEC has publicly questioned the CFP committee, even though the SEC and Big Ten have garnered far more bids from that group than other leagues. There are some obvious differences between the models. Champions League rounds are played throughout the domestic leagues' regular season, featuring clubs that qualified the previous year but may bring dramatically different rosters into the tournament. College football's tournament takes place immediately following the regular season. Even the concept of a play-in tournament, which the Big Ten and SEC have considered setting up on conference championship weekend and selling to a broadcaster for more TV money, has a parallel in Europe. In England's second-tier league, the first- and second-place teams are guaranteed promotion to the Premier League. Teams No. 3 through 6 have a playoff to determine who gets the last spot. A top-six finish in the regular season gives you a chance to reach promotion. Other countries and tiers have similar formats. Under the Big Ten's idea, an Iowa team that went 8-4 in the regular season last year with no AP Top 25 wins would have a shot at the Playoff because it finished in sixth place in the conference. Advertisement While the Champions League has the most-watched sports final in the world, it, too, isn't immune to the demands of the richest teams. It has made constant tweaks and just last year added two more at-large spots for the top two leagues, another measure to stave off a breakaway Super League. As a result, England got five auto-bids this year rather than four. (The EPL got six because Tottenham Hotspur won the Europa League, which is the equivalent of European soccer's NIT and provides a Champions League automatic bid to the winner.) However, unlike college sports, fans of European soccer hold more power through protest. The Super League proposed in 2021 would've supplanted the Champions League with a tournament that guaranteed spots for 15 of the most prestigious soccer teams and some additional at-large spots. But it was the fans of those teams, particularly in England, who revolted against the idea. The supporters who would've seen more big international games and more TV money for their high-profile clubs instead took to the streets, put up banners on their stadiums and rallied against the idea. As much as money had taken over the sport, it couldn't excuse a completely naked cash grab. The allure of regionality and concern over domestic league ramifications still meant something. Players and government officials also spoke out against the idea, and the Super League collapsed as teams bowed to the pressure. That hasn't happened in America. College sports fans have been blindsided by various conference realignment moves, seeing century-old rivalries disappear or teams get left behind. Many fans are not fully happy with the resulting new order, even some of those who have landed in a more financially valuable conference. Some politicians have spoken out, but none have done anything yet. Now, fans will likely have to prepare for four different CFP formats in four years, including a move to straight seeding for 2025, before whatever the 2026 format turns out to be. Advertisement No college sport or major American sport guarantees multiple bids to a division (or conference) in its postseason. But the biggest sports tournament in the world does. The two most powerful conferences might soon try to force through a model that looks unfair to many college football diehards but sounds awfully familiar to international soccer fans. — The Athletic's Seth Emerson contributed reporting.
New York Times
4 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
SEC needs to do the right thing and send Big Ten and its automatic bids packing
DESTIN, Fla. — It's been fun this week to wonder, speculate and argue about the next iteration of the College Football Playoff model, sort of like it would be fun to reimagine your family room after a house fire turned everything to ash. Really, though the arguing is enjoyable, and it's what people in and around college football have been doing since the days of leather helmets and presidential commissions that had purpose (see: Teddy Roosevelt, 1905, forward pass). 'Who did you play?' and 'Your coach cheats!' and 'We have academic standards' hold this bizarre tapestry together as much as marching bands and tailgating and absurdly high coaching contract buyouts. Advertisement Which is one more reason to reject the 4-4-2-2-1 playoff model (also known as FFTTO, which stands for Football Fans, Turn To Opera) that Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti is trying to ram through with support from the SEC. I'm not sure we need more reasons. It's contrary to the idea of competition, it rewards status over achievement, and it's embarrassing to say out loud. Are those enough? Here's one more anyway: We must save the College Football Playoff selection committee. We must keep our Tuesday nights in the fall. We must preserve the opportunity to speculate about what those 13 lucky souls will do. We must retain the right to get angry at them when they inevitably do the wrong thing. We must keep that cherished college football tradition — arguing — alive and robust. Could the SEC be getting led astray by the Big 10? @joerexrode worries that may be the case… — Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) May 27, 2025 I know some of you recoiled at first mention of the selection committee, and I realize framing a CFP format made up mostly of at-large selections as a way to maintain the power of that committee is a good way to get people to dislike that format. But everything in college sports these days is lesser-of-two-evils, so let's play out the greater of two evils known as the FFTTO. That's four automatic bids for the Big Ten and the SEC, two apiece for the ACC and Big 12 and one for the highest-ranked conference champion outside the Power 4. In a 14-team format, that leaves one bid for either Notre Dame if it's ranked in the top 14, or for an at-large selection. In a 16-team format, you would have two or three at-large selections, depending on Notre Dame. (And don't ask why we must move on from the 12-team format that worked quite well last season and will complete an era of two years after the 2025 season. Just chalk everything up in this industry to greed, arrogance and incompetence, and you're probably in the neighborhood.) Advertisement The selection committee in the FFTTO model picks a team or two at the bottom of the field and seeds them at the end. This is not enough to make Tuesday evenings interesting, and 'Laverne & Shirley' isn't walking through that door. Of much more importance, this means conference standings will dictate the field. That makes sense in the NFL, with a limited number of teams, with parity, with all games against comparable teams and with divisional foes playing each other twice a year. In college football, with 18 teams in the Big Ten, 17 in the ACC and 16 in the Big 12 and SEC — with teams in the same leagues often playing schedules that are vastly different in overall rigor — it's a joke. So is the concept of 'play-in' games during championship weekend, the Big Ten and SEC having 3 versus 6 and 4 versus 5 games for automatic bids. So is the idea that the SEC needs this format or compares with the Big Ten in terms of depth of quality programs. Yes, the Big Ten has won the last two national titles. And yes, these leagues have a tremendous rivalry when it comes to fan bases and resources. But the SEC can fill those four automatic bids with quality and go way past, and it would suffer in some years under this format. Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, Oklahoma, LSU, Texas A&M, Auburn … the ingredients are there for championship football, and most of those schools have it in their recent history. The Big Ten has Michigan, Ohio State, Oregon and Penn State, and then other programs have had surges, but nothing suggesting the ability to win a national championship. Indiana was a great story last season, but I'm struggling to get excited for Indiana-Minnesota and Iowa-Illinois on 'Play-In-Game Weekend Brought To You By Zalinsky's Auto Parts.' Keep the five automatic bids and fill the rest of the field out with nine or 11 at-large selections, depending on whether it goes to 14 or 16. Keep playing conference championship games, with Playoff byes as the primary rewards. That's not exciting, but that's why it's not advisable to go full bloat on your leagues and Playoff field while killing the Pac-12. There are consequences. Advertisement Keep playing major nonleague games, because otherwise, the selection committee is going to be light on data to compare the conferences. And take those nonleague games seriously, because the field is mostly at-large selections and winning those games will mean a lot. In the world of automatic bids, in the world of league standings meaning everything, some coaches might view and approach those games like NFL preseason games. It would be nice to see the SEC go to nine conference games, too, but if that's going to happen only with four automatic bids? Stay at eight. Shoot, go to seven if we can avoid FFTTO. It would be better for the Power 4 leagues to play the same number of league games, but again, that does not get us to apples for apples. And then let's make sure the selection committee understands the importance of schedule strength and is armed with the best and most transparent way possible to value it. That the SEC would even consider propping up the Big Ten with the automatic bids is an overreaction to last season, when Indiana and SMU got in over Alabama, Ole Miss and South Carolina. As seen and heard this week at the SEC spring meetings, the whining over that has not ceased. I think the committee got it right. You might not. We should all be able to agree that it was very close and that both sides had arguments. That's how we should like it. Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin told reporters this week that a committee 'is not ideal to choose a postseason,' but he didn't have a better idea. That's because there isn't one, not with this many teams of such varying quality and circumstance. The SEC can make this right. Commissioner Greg Sankey, sensitive to 'good for the game' jabs from other commissioners and questions from media, can lead the way on something that would warrant those four words. Advertisement It was good to learn this week that SEC coaches favor sticking with five automatic bids and going at-large for the rest. They should feel that way. It's better for them. They might complain a lot for millionaires and might overstate the quality of the SEC a bit — you're not playing the Kansas City Chiefs every week, guys — but they're not dumb. As for their bosses, this is a stickier issue. I've talked to athletic directors in the Big Ten and SEC about the FFTTO, and I can paraphrase the view of the AD as such: 'Yes, I'd prefer competition to earn bids, but knowing that Playoff money will be in the budget every year no matter what is a big deal.' That's understandable. These jobs are not easy. Every dollar matters. Revenue sharing is coming. Nonrevenue sports are up for review. But that doesn't mean you make your main revenue driver look like pro wrestling. As the SEC spring meetings wrap up, those of us who still think college football has a lot to offer and has not been burned to the ground have more hope than a few days ago. Sankey handed out info packets to reporters Thursday detailing the SEC's schedule strength superiority over the past decade. This is a bit obnoxious. But the data is relevant. We should keep it in mind. And Sankey and his athletic directors should leave in the Gulf of Mexico the especially flammable pile of kindling that Petitti has been trying to sell them. (Photo of Greg Sankey: Todd Kirkland / Getty Images)
Washington Post
22-05-2025
- Sport
- Washington Post
At his introduction, Maryland's new AD shares goals, spares details
Change was the buzzword Thursday inside the Terrapin Ballroom of The Hotel at the University of Maryland, where new athletic director Jim Smith was introduced amid pomp and pageantry. Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti mentioned 'uncharted waters' and the need to focus on the academic mission 'despite all the changes.' Maryland President Darryll Pines said the school was looking for someone who could navigate the 'quickly changing world of college athletics.''
New York Times
21-05-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Why College Football Playoff expansion talks are trending toward 16-team bracket
As the conference commissioners overseeing the postseason debate what's next for the College Football Playoff, an expansion of the 2026 bracket has practically been a foregone conclusion for months. The initial focus of the discussions was a move from 12 to 14 teams, with a 16-team field a fringe possibility, mostly because of one vexing issue: When would four more early-round Playoff games happen? Advertisement Now, 16 seems to be the sweet spot because access trumps everything else when it comes to the Playoff. Just like when CFP architects jumped from four to 12 teams during the initial expansion discussions, going bigger is usually an idea everyone can support. With Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti seemingly dug in on getting four automatic qualifiers (AQs) for his conference — and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey not forcefully pushing back — the group's other members appear to be building a format around those bids as best they can. 'Everyone else in the room feels like multiple AQs for conferences make it an invitational,' said one person involved in the discussions. The Athletic spoke to seven people involved in or briefed on the CFP management committee's talks over the last five months. They spoke on condition of anonymity because no one has been authorized to speak publicly about what has turned into another drawn-out and increasingly complicated CFP negotiation. 'It's being held hostage,' another person said. The full management committee, which includes the 10 Football Bowl Subdivision conference commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua, is set to connect again later this week for a video conference call. The sources say it is possible the committee could finally decide how schools are seeded for this season's 12-team Playoff — namely, a change to seeds that match the selection committee's rankings, instead of guaranteed byes for conference champions. Last week, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips indicated he could support straight seeding. The current CFP agreement requires unanimous approval within the management committee to enact any format changes. The committee's next in-person meeting, its fourth since Ohio State beat Notre Dame to win the first 12-team playoff in January, is scheduled for mid-June. While deadlines have mostly been theoretical when it comes to CFP decisions over the years, all participants feel it's ideal to set a format for the 2026 season before the 2025 season begins. Advertisement Ultimately, determining the Playoff's format for 2026 and beyond will fall to the leaders of the Power 4 conferences: Petitti, Sankey, Phillips and the Big 12's Brett Yormark. A gathering of those four in New York earlier this month fueled the idea of a 16-team field, as the Big 12 and ACC look to protect their access and brands. As far back as spring 2024, the Big Ten floated the idea of a 14-team CFP that included four AQs for the Big Ten and SEC, two for the Big 12 and ACC, one for the highest-ranked champion from the six other FBS conferences and one spot that would essentially be an at-large bid. The at-large spot creates a path for independent Notre Dame to qualify by earning a high enough ranking from the selection committee. Sankey and SEC administrators have supported securing automatic access, too, and despite skepticism from the rest of the management committee, Petitti has remained staunchly in favor. At a joint meeting between the SEC and Big Ten in New Orleans in February, Petitti talked about the connection between the path to the Playoff and the regular season. 'How you qualify for the postseason impacts the regular season or how you perceive you qualify for the postseason, what factors you think are important,' Petitti said. 'I think that informs the way you think about the regular season, they're just downstream. They're all tied together, right?' Petitti wants a path that relies less on the subjective decisions of the selection committee. Right now, his opinion matters more than most. The new CFP agreement that goes into effect in 2026 gives far more power to the Big Ten and SEC to determine the format's future. It also guarantees those conferences about 58 percent of CFP revenue over the six-year, $7.8 billion deal with ESPN that also kicks in next year. Advertisement There has been some sentiment among the full group that the potential for public and political backlash would discourage the Big Ten and SEC from moving forward with an AQ-heavy CFP model. ESPN officials have also advised caution when it comes to expansion and AQs, for fear the changes could negatively impact the regular season and the Playoff. Still, the AQs remain on the table, and the number of teams continues to grow. Both the Big Ten and SEC have talked internally about using the AQs to reimagine their championship weekends, which would potentially keep more of their teams in the CFP race deeper into the season. 'How do we make sure our fans are engaged?' Texas A&M AD Trev Alberts told The Athletic in April. Alberts was previously at Nebraska in the Big Ten before taking over at the SEC school last year. Petitti has pitched the Big Ten athletic directors on creating two championship weekend play-in games to determine which of the league's teams receive at least two of those automatic bids. Championship game participants would qualify for two AQs, while teams ranked third through sixth would face off for the other two. The Big 12 and ACC, with fewer AQs, would be more limited in how they could expand their championship weekends. More importantly, having half as many AQs as the Big Ten and SEC creates a huge perception problem for the leagues, sending a message to both recruits and potential business partners that the ACC and Big 12 are half as good as college football's top tier. Growing the field to 16 would open up a possible alternative to the 4-4-2-2-1-1 plan by giving the Big 12 and ACC an extra auto-bid, but with stipulations. The Big 12 and ACC's third AQs in a 4-4-3-3-1-1 model would have to reach a minimum selection-committee ranking — possibly No. 18 — to make the Playoff. If not, those would become at-large spots, open to teams from any conference. Advertisement The qualifiers might only apply to the ACC and Big 12, but nothing is firm right now, especially the matter of when to stage any additional Playoff games. 'Even if we go to 14, we're going to run into challenges with where to play the games,' a third person said. A 14-team bracket would have removed two first-round byes and added two games to the first weekend of the Playoff, which is the third weekend in December. That's two weeks after conference championship weekend, giving every team involved in the CFP at least one week off and leaving Army and Navy the second weekend of December all to themselves, as has become tradition for the service academy rivalry. There is no obvious spot for two more games on the opening weekend that would provide a desirable, exclusive TV window. Last year, Notre Dame-Indiana kicked off the first 12-team CFP on a Friday night. A tripleheader followed on Saturday, starting at noon ET and competing directly with two late-season NFL games. In a 16-team bracket, one alternative is to eliminate byes and play eight first-round games over that weekend. That approach is highly unlikely to advance. More likely, the CFP would look to start a week earlier, on what has traditionally been Army-Navy weekend, with the four lowest seeds (13 through 16) playing their way into the second weekend's six-game bracket. The top two seeds would still get byes into the quarterfinals. 'You can play the games anytime, but there's no way to maximize the TV audience,' a fourth person said. Also notable: The CFP's new contract with ESPN does not require the network to pay for more inventory beyond the 11 games required for a 12-team field. All those issues appear to be secondary. As the haggling over access continues, one thing seems clear when it comes to the CFP: Adding more teams will be part of the resolution.
New York Times
07-05-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Big Ten revenue soared to $928 million for 2024 fiscal year
In its final year as a 14-member conference, the Big Ten saw its revenue soar to $928 million, with projections to exceed $1 billion during the current 2025 fiscal year, according to the league's 2024 tax statement. The league disbursed between $63.26 million and $63.43 million to 12 of its members and $61.52 million to Rutgers and Maryland, which borrowed money from the Big Ten while they were considered non-vested members from 2014 to 2020. Both should obtain full shares in 2027. The 2024 fiscal year concluded on June 30, 2024. Most of the league's 18 athletics departments have budgeted around $75 million from Big Ten coffers for the current 2025 fiscal year. Maryland and Rutgers will obtain slightly smaller shares. Of the former Pac-12 schools that joined the Big Ten, Washington and Oregon have half-shares until the 2030 fiscal year, while USC and UCLA entered the Big Ten as fully vested members. Former Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren received more than $6.8 million, including $5.75 million in bonuses, for ushering in new media rights contracts, a development first reported by USA Today. Warren left the Big Ten for the Chicago Bears on April 14, 2023. Former Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany received more than $5.85 million in both reportable and deferred compensation from the Big Ten. Delany retired on Jan. 2, 2020. Tony Petitti, who replaced Warren as commissioner in May 2023, earned $2.62 million in base compensation and bonuses in fiscal 2024. Also notable: A new media-rights contract with CBS and NBC helped Big Ten profits grow by more than $48 million. But for the fourth straight year, the league posted a shortfall, with expenses growing to $942 million. Still, the league recorded net assets of $213 million. In the same fiscal year, the Southeastern Conference earned $898.75 million and disbursed between $52.35 million and $53.13 million to its 14 full-time members. The SEC also provided new members Oklahoma and Texas with $27.5 million to offset their Big 12 media rights forfeitures. (Photo: Michael Allio / Icon Sportswire AP Images)
