Tony Petitti didn’t really leave much room for interpretation when he was asked about a 24-team College Football Playoff and what it would mean for the Big Ten Championship Game:

I think it’s pretty much we won’t be playing a championship game if we go to 24. I think that's been pretty settled.

That one line basically set the tone for everything else he said. Because what he was really getting at is this: the Big Ten is willing to walk away from one of its biggest showcase events — even after it just delivered the most-watched conference title game in college football history — if it means getting a bigger seat at the playoff table.

Petitti wasn’t dismissing the importance of the game itself. Coaches still care. Players still care. Nobody is showing up in Indianapolis thinking the trophy doesn’t matter. But in his view, the real issue comes after the confetti falls.

In a 24-team format, the difference between winning and losing that game could be massive. One team might lock in a better playoff path or even a bye. The other could walk out of Lucas Oil Stadium banged up, lose their seed, and have to turn right around and prepare for another elimination game the following week.

So the Big Ten isn’t saying the championship game doesn’t matter. They’re just admitting that something else matters more.

As Petitti put it, “access is still the most important thing.”

The Championship Game Can Become A Punishment

The idea sounds simple on paper: expand the College Football Playoff to 24 teams and give more teams more access, more games, and more chaos in December. But once you start mapping it onto a real season, the Big Ten's already asking a very uncomfortable question — what exactly happens to the conference championship game?

As Petitti put it:

I think there’s discussion about it now. When you talk to the coaches up here who have played in the game as they get ready for the postseason, there’s a lot of conflicting incentives. It’s still very powerful to win a Big Ten championship, and teams play hard. They want to win that game. But you’re talking about a pretty tough journey to go all the way through and where you are playing next and what happens if a team loses that game, they don’t get a bye, and they have to go play relatively quickly.

That’s the tension sitting at the center of everything.

Under the proposed 24-team format, the top eight seeds would get first-round byes. Everyone else — seeds nine through 24 — would be thrown into on-campus playoff games during what's currently conference championship weekend. The winners would then advance to face those rested top-eight teams.

And that’s where things start to get messy for conferences trying to preserve a title game.

Picture a scenario where the seventh-ranked team meets the ninth-ranked team for a conference championship. The winner might jump into a bye. The loser? They could easily fall out of the top eight entirely and be forced to turn around and play again the very next week. No rest, no protection — just an extra high-stakes game added to an already brutal stretch.

In that world, a conference championship stops being a reward and starts looking like a risk.

A team already outside the top eight would need five straight playoff wins to claim a national title. Add a conference championship game on top of that, and suddenly you’re talking about six postseason games after a 12-game regular season. That’s 18 games of high-level football in a single year.

At that point, you’re not far off from asking whether college football should start borrowing language from the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement just to keep everyone upright.

The uncomfortable part is that this tension already exists in the current 12-team playoff, even if the Big Ten’s recent title games haven’t fully exposed it. Oregon’s 45–37 win over Penn State in 2024 sent both teams into the playoff just fine. Indiana’s 13–10 win over Ohio State last December was even more dramatic — Indiana grabbed the No. 1 seed and went on to win the national championship, while Ohio State only slipped to No. 2 and kept their bye.

In both cases, the “loser” didn’t really suffer. But that’s exactly the point Petitti's worried about. He doesn’t want the system relying on the selection committee being that forgiving every year — especially in a 24-team format where the difference between a bye and a first-round game becomes a hard line.

Still, even acknowledging all of that, giving up the Big Ten Championship Game wouldn’t be painless. Last season’s Indiana–Ohio State matchup drew an average of 18.332 million viewers and peaked just under 20 million. Fox reportedly paid around $50 million just to bring the rights back from NBC.

This isn’t filler content. It’s one of the most valuable single games the Big Ten has.

Petitti Isn’t Backing Away From 24

During the winter CFP meetings, the conference basically put a pretty straightforward offer on the table: they’d be willing to live with a temporary 16-team playoff, but only if the SEC agreed to eventually move to 24 teams by 2029. That’s where things started to stall. Greg Sankey wasn’t willing to lock into that kind of long-term commitment, and Petitti wasn’t going to sign off on 16 without it.

So everything just kind of froze in place, and the playoff stayed at 12 for 2026.

Behind the scenes, though, the Big Ten wasn’t exactly standing still. A planning document that circulated in February laid out what their ideal version of this future actually looks like. And it’s a pretty big shift from what we’re used to.

In that version, conference championship games basically go away entirely. The first two rounds of the playoff get played on campus, which adds a really cool home-field element, and then the whole thing still funnels into the traditional bowl sites around New Year’s, like we’ve always known.

By the time the Big Ten got to their May meetings, even that “we’ll meet you halfway” 16-team idea didn’t really feel like enough anymore. Petitti made it pretty clear the conference was willing to just wait it out rather than settle for something smaller and call it progress.

He’s also shifted a bit from where the Big Ten originally stood on guaranteed conference bids. Instead of trying to lock in automatic spots, the preference now is to let a selection committee pick the full 24-team field. The thinking there is pretty simple: if you’re the Big Ten, you already feel like your best teams are going to get in anyway, so why not just open the door wider and let the resumes speak for themselves?

And to be fair, they’ve got some backing for that confidence. Michigan, Ohio State, and Indiana have each won the last three national championships. On top of that, Big Ten teams have combined for 11 playoff wins over the first two years of the 12-team format, which is more than double any other conference. So from their perspective, this isn’t about proving they belong. It’s about making sure more of them get a shot.

That’s really the core of it. Expansion, in their eyes, isn’t about validation. It’s about volume.

Petitti has also been pretty open about what that expanded system would actually do for the sport. In his view, teams sitting somewhere between 16th and 24th in the rankings would still have something real to play for deep into November. And the teams above them wouldn’t exactly be coasting either — they’d be fighting for home games or a first-round bye.

And honestly, he’s not wrong about that part. A late-season matchup between, say, the 19th and 23rd ranked teams would suddenly matter in a way it just doesn’t right now. That’s real stakes, real urgency.

But at the same time, it also changes what “meaningful” even means in the first place. A loss that used to end your season outright might just become something you recover from in the seeding process. You’re still alive, still in the mix, just in a slightly worse spot.

And that’s where Petitti’s thinking really shows itself. He’s essentially saying the Big Ten's willing to make a trade here, and he’s been pretty direct about it:

Are you willing to give up your championship game to have the expanded Playoff?… We think overall if we expand the playoff and have the access we need, we’d be willing to make that trade. As great as our championship has been, it’s been wildly successful. We’ve had incredible games the last couple of seasons, but I still think we’re willing to do that.

He’s not dismissing the championship game or pretending it hasn’t mattered. He’s actually acknowledging that it’s been a huge success.

But at the end of the day, it comes down to what the Big Ten values more in this next era of college football. And right now, it’s pretty clear they’re leaning toward access, expansion, and getting more of their teams into the national picture — even if it means letting go of something that’s worked really well for them for over a decade.

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