MINNEAPOLIS — Tony Petitti’s six-month anniversary of his hiring as Big Ten commissioner comes Wednesday, and that half-year has consisted of significant change across the college sports landscape.
From adding Washington and Oregon to finalizing media rights contracts to working with fellow commissioners on a 12-team College Football Playoff, Petitti hardly had time for a honeymoon period after his May 15 start date.
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“I feel absolutely privileged to have the job. I really do,” Petitti said “It’s an incredible responsibility. You see it and feel it every time you’re on campus.”
Petitti spoke with The Athletic as part of the Big Ten men’s and women’s basketball media days at the Target Center, which will host the women’s tournament for the second straight year and the men’s tournament for the first time. There were plenty of items to discuss, ranging from the 2024 football schedules to current and future basketball plans to locations for future postseason sites. With that, here are 10 big topics that Petitti addressed on Monday.
Future football schedules
The Big Ten unveiled conference football opponents from 2024 through 2028 last week, and Petitti basked in the way it was arranged. For him, the confluence of implementing an equitable conference-wide schedule while maintaining traditional rivalries in an unorthodox fashion made the entire operation a win.
Every Big Ten team will play the other 17 at least twice over the next five years. There are 12 protected annual rivalries, ranging from Iowa keeping three to Penn State with none.
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“The real art was the fact that they were able to salute competitive balance and tradition at the same time,” Petitti said. “The way they did that was by doing something that probably wasn’t the first place you would go. We’re having not every school (with) the same number of protected matchups. Your first instinct in scheduling based on my experience would have been to try the same structure all the way across, but that’s not what happened. That was incredibly smart because it allows you to get to the competitive balance. And then it has a third thing that’s really important, which is that it allows you to see everybody more frequently. So, to me, it’s really well done.”
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National exposure
What perhaps excites Petitti the most is just how the schedule will lay out for its media partners. Among the highest-profile matchups involving newcomers include USC at Michigan, Oregon at Michigan, Ohio State at Oregon, Penn State at USC, Washington at Iowa, Nebraska at USC and Oregon at Wisconsin. Then there are the games involving legacy members such as Michigan at Ohio State, Ohio State at Penn State and Wisconsin at Iowa along with the traditional in-state rivalry games.
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“When you saw the schedule released the other day, it shows you just how effectively we’re going to be able to program all that exposure,” Petitti said. “We’ve got the windows and the reach. But the second part of that is making sure that we’re putting great matchups everywhere we can, and I think we’re doing that now. It’s going to another level next year.
“We look at the depth of the games that we’re talking about, like it’s just going to make each of those telecasts even stronger. We’re off to a good start. It’s the right pattern. I think it’s unprecedented.”
Friday night lights
This current season, the Big Ten aired five games on Friday nights, not counting the Black Friday doubleheader next month. With Fox ponying up to help the conference add Oregon and Washington, the Big Ten will air nine or more Friday games in 2024 on Fox properties.
“It’ll be significant in terms of the amount of national exposure that we have on Friday night on Fox,” Petitti said.
Some schools, like Michigan, will not compete on Friday. Ohio State, Penn State and Iowa have logistical challenges that prevent them from hosting except in specific circumstances. There also will be Saturday prime-time kickoffs on the West Coast, but not every week.
Growing pains
With the Big Ten’s new media rights contract, nine football games will stream on Peacock, which forces consumers to pay a subscription beyond their traditional cable or satellite bill. Ohio State, for instance, plays Purdue on Peacock this week, the first time since the mid-1990s that the Buckeyes will not appear on linear television.
“There is no doubt that we’re asking fans to be in multiple places if they want to watch everything,” Petitti said. “We want them to watch everything. So we want them to be everywhere.
“I think what we can do is express the fact that we always want it to be as simple as possible for our fans, and that’s what we emphasize. Promote it properly and tell them how to find it. Make it as easy as possible.”
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Women’s sports exposure
With record ratings for last season’s NCAA women’s basketball tournament, including nearly 10 million viewers watching Iowa play LSU and soaring numbers throughout the 2022-23 regular season, the Big Ten has a chance to build upon that success.
This year, NBC and Fox each will air Big Ten women’s basketball games, and CBS will carry the league championship game. In addition, Peacock will stream 20 games, FS1 will air 11 and BTN will carry 50. With 88 league-operated games — not counting rights owned by other leagues — it’s the most in league history.
“Typically, if you’re at a network as a programmer and you see success, you start thinking about how I can get closer to that?” said Petitti, a former executive at ABC and CBS and Major League Baseball deputy commissioner. “How can I increase the telecasts? What can we do to expose it? What can we do feature-wise to reinforce it all that? So I think that’s the first thing.
“Then the flip side and then even the league side, how do we make it easy for those partners to get more access? What can we do to bring fans closer? How do we expand the reach? How can we get more windows on broadcasts?”
Nebraska volleyball
More than 92,000 fans attended a Nebraska volleyball match at Memorial Stadium, shattering a world record for attendance at a women’s sporting event. Petitti was there, too, and he came away invigorated.
“The execution was flawless,” Petitti said. “I’ve never been around an event where so many people were so happy. It was absolutely contagious. The crowd, it was as if they were playing. And the student-athletes, for them to have that experience, not only in Nebraska but with their opponent that night, like all of it mattered. I’m just so happy to be out there.”
Championship locations
Indianapolis has hosted the Big Ten football championship game since 2011 and has a contract through 2024. Chicago and Indianapolis mostly have split the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, but Madison Square Garden in New York, Washington, D.C., Minneapolis and the Chicago suburbs also have staged the tournaments.
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With USC, UCLA, Washington and Oregon joining officially next August, the Big Ten’s valuable postseason properties have a chance to find new future homes. Petitti was non-committal on locations but encouraged communities to bid on those events.
“I think what’s more important is the process, which is to encourage as many places, if they have interest, to express it, and to put them in position to put together meaningful bids for our tournaments and championships,” Petitti said. “That’s what we’re doing now. And we do have a pretty wide geographic area of interest going forward.”
Aiding, not hurting, national title hopes
A key piece of that location discussion relates to national competition. The site must not burden the teams in their quest for an NCAA Tournament or College Football Playoff title.
“The coaches and the student-athletes are thinking about the whole journey,” Petitti said. “We want to make sure that we’re doing the same thing for them, that we’re putting them in that position. So that when the women advance from here, they’re in the best position to go deep in the NCAA Tournament and win a national championship. So, it’s the strength of the bid. It’s the connection. It’s the excitement that student-athletes and coaches would have to play in a particular venue.”
But don’t look for the Big Ten to move its men’s basketball championship from leading into CBS’ selection show.
“In the current format we have, we’re going to finish on Sunday,” Petitti said. “It does not mean other ideas (couldn’t) be put forward about the ways to stay on top of it. But right now, we have media commitment to CBS to do that, and it’s worked well.”
College Football Playoff
Playoff expansion from four teams to 12 arrives next season. The commissioners continue to discuss a format that originally was agreed upon to include the top six conference champions and six at-large bids. But that was before the Pac-12 imploded, with 10 teams leaving for other power conferences. That has pushed the discussion to five champions and seven at-large bids, but no agreement has been reached.
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“It’s just too soon to say that it’s pointing in one direction,” Petitti said. “I’ll just tell you that the group is committed to continue discussing it. We understand the timing of having to come to a decision there.”
Contraction
There’s a fantastical discussion that as conferences grow, eventually they will contract or dismiss low-performing members. Petitti gave the idea no credence.
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“I’ve never talked about any idea that we would ever be smaller. It just never gets discussed,” Petitti said. “The simplest way to put it is, I think the job as commissioner and the job of the staff that we have in the league office is to make sure the Big Ten is as great tomorrow as is today. The expansions that we’ve got coming helps that, but we look at it as one league.”
(Photo: Michael Hickey / Getty Images)
