LAS VEGAS — Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti doubled down Tuesday on the conference’s preference for multiple automatic qualifiers in the next version of the College Football Playoff, increasing the likelihood of a showdown with the Southeastern Conference when the format for 2026 is decided.
At Big Ten football media days, Petitti said any change that adds at-large bids and increases the discretion and role of a selection committee — a format the SEC and others have shown a preference for — “will have a difficult time getting support of the Big Ten.”
Petitti also bolstered the idea of a weekend’s worth of conference play-in games for some of the four automatic bids that would go to the Big Ten in its preferred version of a 16-team playoff, even though the games could put some of the Big Ten’s top-seeded teams in jeopardy of being shut out of the CFP.
The likely slate for that would include a conference title game between Nos. 1 and 2 and play-in games involving the Nos. 3-6 seeds.
“There are 18 members in the Big Ten, you have 17 possible opponents and you play nine,” Petitti said. “There’s a lot of discrepancy. Let alone making comparisons across leagues, there’s a lot of issues about how you compare teams inside the Big Ten. … Where we came down is we were willing to take that risk.”
Indiana coach Curt Cignetti, whose team earned the 10th seed in last year’s playoff and lost 27-17 to Notre Dame in a game that didn’t feel as close as the score, echoed the commissioner’s thoughts and pointed out that Ohio State finished fourth in the conference last season and went on to win the national title.
If “you want to put the best teams in the playoffs, give the best leagues the AQ, but make them earn it with play-in games,” Cignetti said.
Though there is a Dec. 1 deadline for expanding the playoff for 2026, Petitti said he wouldn’t put any any firm date on it. That echoed a sentiment SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey voiced earlier this month when he said the 12-team format, which went into effect last season and offers automatic spots to five conference champions, could stay in place until the two conferences can agree.
Petitti said recent meetings between Big Ten and SEC athletic directors have produced good results on a variety of topics and he expects another such summit would do the same.
“The goal would be to bring people back together, have a conversation about what we think works, then kind of go from there,” he said.
The Big Ten and SEC ultimately will decide the new format, with input from the Atlantic Coast and Big 12 conferences along with Notre Dame and the five smaller conferences that are part of the system.
ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips said his preference is a format with five automatic bids and the rest at-large, which is also what Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark has said his conference favors.
“Fairness and access should also be part of the equation,” Phillips said Tuesday at ACC media days in Charlotte, N.C., while backing the work of the selection committee that would have a bigger role with 11 at-large selections to sort through.
Conferences currently earn $4 million for every team they place in the playoff, and that number could grow, which adds to the stakes of how the next version of the playoff takes form.
Embedded in the debate is the nine-game conference slate the Big Ten plays versus eight games for the SEC. That extra nonconference game, some believe, gives SEC teams a chance to bolster their schedules, which then adds value to any calculation the committee would consider in determining at-large bids.
The SEC is exploring moving to nine conference games.
Illinois athletic director Josh Whitman portrayed a Big Ten that is unified around the format of nine regular-season conference games, a new round of play-in games and something like four automatic spots in a 16-team playoff going to both the SEC and Big Ten.
“It means you’re going to have probably eight or nine, maybe 10 schools that are jockeying for the fifth and sixth spots as you get into November,” Whitman said. “It’s so cool when you just think about what it would mean for our fan bases and the enthusiasm around those games. And it minimizes some of the subjectivity that would be placed around the selection committee.”
AP’s Aaron Beard contributed.
