one interview with Fox Sports analyst Joel Klatt<\/a>, his media days address was the first time Petitti made his pitch publicly.<\/p>\nInitially it appeared the Big Ten and SEC were aligned on the proposed format, but that\u2019s no longer the case. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, speaking at his league\u2019s media days last week, said, \u201cWe had a different view coming out of (May\u2019s SEC meetings) around the notion of allocations, if you will. \u2026 The Big Ten has a different view, that\u2019s fine.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ACC and Big 12 have made clear they support a \u201c5+11\u201d model: the top five conference champs, as is the case currently, plus 11 at-large bids.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy would I as a commissioner cap (the Big 12\u2019s) participation?\u201d commissioner Brett Yormark said at his league\u2019s media days. \u201cIt makes no sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Petitti reiterated that the Big Ten and SEC \u201ccontrol changes to the CFP format and the selection committee process\u201d going forward \u201cafter considering feedback from the membership.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are open to considering any format ideas that come from our (conference) colleagues or the CFP staff,\u201d he said, \u201cbut to be clear, formats that increase the discretion and role of the CFP selection committee will have a difficult time getting support from the Big Ten.\u201d<\/p>\n
A big part of Petitti\u2019s pitch is the concept of conference play-in games. In the Big Ten\u2019s vision, conference championship weekend would no longer consist solely of No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchups, but also 3 vs. 6 and 4 vs. 5, the winners of which would receive automatic CFP berths. Petitti predicted \u201cfans will gravitate to it.\u201d Had that been in place last year, the No. 6 seed would have been Iowa, which finished 6-3 in the conference and 8-4 overall.<\/p>\n
Petitti pushed back when a reporter said, \u201cI don\u2019t sense a clamor for a four-loss team in the Playoff.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re 6-3 in the Big Ten, I would argue that\u2019s a great record, and if you stumbled in a nonconference game, I don\u2019t know why that disqualifies you,\u201d Petitti said. \u201c8-4 as a winning percentage, if you project that winning percentage in every other sport, I\u2019m pretty sure you make the postseason. \u2026 There are plenty of teams in professional sports who qualify for the playoffs who can\u2019t get past the first-round game. That\u2019s OK, they still get to play. We\u2019ll figure it out on the field, rather than sitting in a room.\u201d<\/p>\n
The six Big Ten coaches who spoke Tuesday all supported Petitti\u2019s plan. Ohio State coach Ryan Day said Big Ten schools will be less likely to play tough out-of-conference games without the assurance of automatic berths, given they play nine league games as compared with the SEC\u2019s eight.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we\u2019re going to be in a situation where we get four automatic qualifiers, then I think it\u2019d be great to have a 10th game against a Power 4 team,\u201d Day said. \u201cIf we\u2019re not going to do that, then I don\u2019t think it makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Photo: Kirby Lee \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAS VEGAS \u2014 Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti on Tuesday defended his proposed 16-team College Football Playoff format…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":84801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1428,3915,9443,1379,3914,4739,7800,9444,11995,1380,4733,9445,1381,8796,3916,62,8800,67,132,68,9446,20974,1427],"class_list":{"0":"post-84800","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-college-football","9":"tag-illinois-fighting-illini","10":"tag-indiana-hoosiers","11":"tag-iowa-hawkeyes","12":"tag-maryland-terrapins","13":"tag-michigan-state-spartans","14":"tag-michigan-wolverines","15":"tag-minnesota-golden-gophers","16":"tag-nebraska-cornhuskers","17":"tag-northwestern-wildcats","18":"tag-ohio-state-buckeyes","19":"tag-oregon-ducks","20":"tag-penn-state-nittany-lions","21":"tag-purdue-boilermakers","22":"tag-rutgers-scarlet-knights","23":"tag-sports","24":"tag-ucla-bruins","25":"tag-united-states","26":"tag-unitedstates","27":"tag-us","28":"tag-usc-trojans","29":"tag-washington-huskies","30":"tag-wisconsin-badgers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}