LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Big Ten commissioner doubled down on the league’s preference for multiple automatic qualifiers in the next version of the College Football Playoff on Tuesday, increasing the likelihood of a showdown with the Southeastern Conference when the format for 2026 is decided.
At the league’s football media days, Tony 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. He said the league favored this 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 league title game between Nos. 1 and 2 and play-in games involving the 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 but 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 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 leagues 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.
Big Ten and SEC hold most cards in setting new format
The Big Ten and SEC will ultimately 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.
At his conference’s media days, ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips said his preference was a format with five automatic bids and the rest at-large, which is also what Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark has said his league favors.
“Fairness and access should also be part of the equation,” Phillips said Tuesday in Charlotte, North Carolina,, while backing the work of the selection committee that would have a bigger role with up to 11 at-large selections to sort through.
In-conference regular-season games an issue
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 vs. eight for the SEC. That extra non-conference 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 ten 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.”
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AP Sports Writer Aaron Beard contributed.
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