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<\/p>\nRemember all the thrilling games of the 2024-25 College Football Playoff? Texas\u2019 two-overtime victory against Arizona State in the Peach Bowl! Notre Dame\u2019s walkoff field goal to defeat Penn State in the Orange Bowl! And \u2026 and \u2026 hey, how about that Peach Bowl?<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 those two above \u2014 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.)<\/p>\n
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More, in other words, didn\u2019t come anywhere near better. Yes, these were college football playoff games \u2026 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\u2019s the incentive to limit that product? Why worry about quality when quantity is your overall goal?<\/p>\n
College power conference leaders know this, which is why they\u2019re angling so hard for representation in the CFP\u2019s bracket \u2014 now at 12, almost certain to expand to 16. If \u2014 no, let\u2019s be honest, when \u2014 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\u2019re in. (Win those winnable games, Alabama.)<\/p>\n
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But meritocracy isn\u2019t the endgame here, aristocracy is. And so now you have Tony Petitti, Big Ten commissioner, backing a \u201c4-4-2-2-1-3\u201d 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\u2019s like one of those ridiculous old word problems \u2014 \u201cIf the Big Ten gets four automatic berths in the playoffs, and the SEC gets four automatic berths \u2026 how can they screw the ACC and the Big 12 out of three more?\u201d)<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, I think there\u2019s been a lot of concern about how [the playoff selections] are made. I focus on that piece,\u201d Petitti explained. \u201cHow are we differentiating from teams that don\u2019t have head-to-head play, teams that don\u2019t play common schedules across leagues that do different things? I think that\u2019s a really hard, tall order.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s quite the rhetorical trick Pettiti is playing there, saying that because his conference is so big, you can\u2019t adequately determine strength by head-to-head matchups alone. And whose fault is that? It wasn\u2019t the selection committee that expanded the Big \u201cTen\u201d to 18 teams.<\/p>\n
Petitti isn\u2019t 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.)<\/p>\n
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Big Ten Conference commissioner Tony Petitti speaks during the 2025 Big Ten Football Media Days at Mandalay Bay Convention Center. (Louis Grasse\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
(Louis Grasse via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Petitti understands that there are spots that need to be filled \u2014 both now and in the 16-team playoff to come \u2014 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 \u201csettle it on the field,\u201d and run counter to literally every \u201cyou gotta earn it!\u201d mantra preached by every coach from the beginning of time. It\u2019s no surprise why the ACC and Big 12 hate the idea, and it\u2019s also no surprise what\u2019s driving the Big Ten\u2019s push to claim as much inventory as possible.<\/p>\n
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We\u2019re 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\u2019s wonderful that you can hum along to your alma mater\u2019s fight song \u2026 but maybe you can kick in a few bucks to the ol\u2019 athletic capital campaign while you\u2019re at it? That rivalry you enjoyed your entire life \u2026 well, your rival just didn\u2019t 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\u2019s almost as good, right?<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Fans might want more inventory because \u2026 well, more football is good football, right? Yeah, not so much. Sure, there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Remember all the thrilling games of the 2024-25 College Football Playoff? Texas\u2019 two-overtime victory against Arizona State in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[26980,1607,5688,6381,399,26979,398,396,397,8392,99,9596],"class_list":["post-32094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-arizona-state","tag-college-football","tag-college-football-playoff","tag-conference","tag-football","tag-inventory","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-penn-state","tag-sports","tag-tony-petitti"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}