When the Big Ten was still waffling on whether or not to play football late in the pandemic summer of 2020, an idea was hatched on a series of Zooms.
If the conference played a shortened slate of league-only games that season, how could they increase the broadcast inventory? The result was Champions Week.
The then-14-team league would hold its traditional Big Ten championship game between division winners, and all other teams also would play that same Saturday in December. The second-place team in the East Division would take on the second-place team in the West and so on down the standings. Beginning at noon ET, there would be a series of kickoffs leading into a final clash for the conference title.
The Big Ten never wound up pulling off the concept, as COVID-19 cancellations resulted in just three additional games.
However, Champions Week was merely reincarnated to fit within the framework of an expanded College Football Playoff with the same goal of getting more TV revenues flowing into the coffers of Big Ten schools.
That became apparent last week, as Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde reported that similarly styled play-in games were the impetus behind Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti’s push for automatic qualifiers. Instead of lining up based on division standings for games leading into the conference title, the 18-team league would stage what amounts to another round tacked onto the CFP with teams between third and sixth place.
“We feel pretty strongly that fans will really gravitate to a play-in weekend. Providing games that are do-or-die on the field will drive fan interest,” Petitti said at media days in Las Vegas. “The weekend that we’re talking about where you would have championship games and across all conferences, meaningful play-in games, I don’t see how that’s a bad thing for football, and I think fans will gravitate to it.”
In a vacuum, it sounds intriguing from a Big Ten perspective, with the ability to schedule tougher nonconference games becoming a key selling point to schools who must entice fans to fill their giant stadiums. Even more teams would technically be alive for playoff spots going into the final few weeks of the season and any imbalance when it comes to difficult schedules could be mitigated.
But it is even more attractive to the TV networks that will be ponying up millions for any such games—themselves prompted to jump through hoops as the result of the original sin when the CFP decided to extend its contract to remain all in with ESPN and not allow others to even get into the game.
This came about last year when the conference commissioners and school presidents that run the CFP opted to extend the playoff’s broadcast deal beginning in 2026 instead of taking the event to the open market. ESPN pushed to retain the rights to the expanded tournament amid a unique media rights environment while the Big Ten and SEC threatened to leave the CFP if they weren’t handed increased control and revenues.
“In the spring of 2024, the member conferences came together to negotiate a media deal with ESPN. Prior to concluding that deal, an agreement was reached that set forth revenue sharing from the College Football Playoff to the conferences and Notre Dame,” Petitti said. “A specific decision on format was not reached. Instead, it was agreed that the Big Ten and SEC would control changes to the CFP format and the selection committee process after considering feedback from the membership. Like the revenue-share parameters, the Big Ten and SEC’s format control is set forth clearly in the agreement that all members signed.”
“The famed MOU [memorandum of understanding] was signed by every commissioner in that room. And while I wasn’t part of that process, I now operate within the terms of that agreement,” American commissioner Tim Pernetti said. “Every commissioner in FBS has the responsibility to ensure that decisions are made with the full breadth of the college football ecosystem in mind, not just the most powerful corners of it.
“Tony Petitti is a strong advocate for his league. I have great respect for him and the experience and passion he brings to the table.”
That passion and the reasons behind it, however, are leading to disagreement on a topic that goes much deeper than future playoff expansion and automatic qualifier spots.
Fox’s role in pushing for these play-in games cannot be understated even if most of the games would go to other TV partners, who otherwise lack any presence on championship weekend. It would enhance Fox’s lead-in audience for the Big Ten title game when it broadcasts the game in prime time. It also could give Fox the more attractive of the two matchups for a traditional noon kickoff slot in years where another network holds the rights to the championship.
This past year for example, Fox only had rights to the Mountain West title game on championship weekend. According to Sports Media Watch, that prime-time showing drew just over three million viewers despite Boise State trying to lock up a playoff bid in the game. That’s just shy of half the audience that tuned in for the ACC championship that aired opposite of it and the fourth-lowest-rated FBS title game that weekend.
Once source familiar with discussions believes the play-in games could be worth nine figures for the Big Ten eventually.
“Fox is putting so much pressure on the Big Ten,” a source with knowledge of the situation tells SI. “It’s not the right thing for college football.”
The pursuit of such games is also Fox’s only avenue to accessing what amounts to a College Football Playoff game without the branding and final price tag that comes with it. That’s because ESPN opted for a favorable deal to sublicense to TNT Sports over the coming years instead.
“I don’t doubt for a second that it’s Fox behind this,” says one conference commissioner. “But [the TV executives] all play a role in this.”
Nobody stands to gain more from a move to play-in games than Fox, which owns 61% of the Big Ten Network, the entity that actually holds the Big Ten’s grant of rights. When the conference was negotiating its most recent round of media deals, Fox Sports executives were sitting across from the table from their counterparts at CBS and NBC, representing the conference and ironing out details in a manner that underscored this reality and gave them the pick of the litter on some attractive inventory.
“Last year the four most-viewed college football games of the season featured Big Ten teams, as did seven of the top 10 and 12 of the top 20,” Petitti said. “Each of our three broadcast television partners—CBS, Fox and NBC—had at least one Big Ten matchup with more than 9.5 million viewers. Twenty-one of our games had more than five million viewers.”
Fox’s aggressiveness has entrenched the Big Ten’s position and put the crosshairs on Petitti for simply doing what he was tasked with by his own presidents and athletic directors: generate more money for the league. His stance also stems from the one that predated this latest mess in agreeing to go along with ESPN as the lone owner and operator of the postseason for a sport that is fragmented among many TV broadcasters during the regular season.
“We have the responsibility to do what’s right for college football ... not what’s right for one or two or more conferences,” Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark said earlier this month. “We do not need a professional model because we are not the NFL.”
He’s right on that, as the NFL definitely would not have gone anywhere near the CFP’s deal structure based on how it rotates its marquee properties among multiple broadcasters.
While that can’t be revisited, the question about what to do moving forward has now reached a bit of a stalemate over the future of the playoff.
Momentum was once behind expansion to 14 or 16 teams. Yet without the two principals in the Big Ten and SEC being aligned, as they very much are not, it looks as though what we’ll see this fall and winter will stick around until a compromise is reached.
“Whatever decision they make this year, they’re not held to that in perpetuity. They can change that at some point down the road, but it would be the format that we would go into the new agreement with ESPN with,” College Football Playoff executive director Rich Clark says. “Of course, they could change it later if they relooked at it. We’re not beholden to it.”
Perhaps not beholden to a new format moving forward, but certainly weighed down by the original commitment from which all this recent drama has flowed from.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as CFP Expansion Division Stems From Stronghold ESPN Has Over Games.