Commissioner Tony Petitti fielded an endless amount of questions about the Big Ten's relationship with the SEC as his conference opened its media days on Tuesday morning. Are they in agreement about changes they'd like to see in the Protect College Sports Act? Would they join the SEC in forming an NFL Lite if the PCSA fails? Where do they stand on the Playoff? Petitti and his SEC counterpart Greg Sankey had spoken five times already before Petitti stepped up to the podium, he said.
And yet, these frenemy superpowers are very much rivals on the field, and Petitti was asked Tuesday about Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz's accusation that a primary reason that the Big Ten has won the last three national championships is that each team that won that championship did not play a Power 4 opponent in non-conference play.
Petitti's response, essentially, was that the Big Ten schedule is so tough that its teams don't need a tune-up game in non-conference play.
"You cannot send your top teams out into the CFP and have them be successful -- we have been very successful -- if they're not going through a gauntlet in the regular season. This idea that the middle of our conference isn't hard, it's just not right," he said. "At the end of the day, our teams are ready for the CFP. Our travel looks like the CFP travel, you're going all over the country, the difficulty of the road in the Big Ten, I just think that's overlooked. The reason why we've been so successful is our teams are prepared. You cannot be ready to play in the postseason if you've played (an easy regular season). That just doesn't happen. It's tough to win on the road in the Big Ten for even our best teams."
The Big Ten went to a 9-game conference schedule in 2016, and the SEC will not play its first 9-game slate until this fall. And over the past decade, there was plenty of hemming and hawing from the Midwest about the SEC's refusal to add a ninth game, all while the SEC ripped off title after title. “We figured we’d just adopt an SEC schedule and focus on our conference games,” Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti said last July to defend his team's non-con slate of Old Dominion, Kennesaw State, and Indiana State.
All the while, the SEC had a requirement to play a Power 4 non-conference opponent (while teams like Florida and Georgia often played two) while also arguing they didn't need a ninth game because their eight were tougher than your nine.
Three national championships later, the shoe is on the other foot. The Big Ten argues its nine games are tough enough without a mandate to play a 10th Power 4 game and -- much to the SEC's frustration -- the CFP selection committee agrees with them. Michigan earned the No. 1 seed in 2023 despite playing East Carolina, UNLV and Bowling Green in non-conference and not even facing a ranked team until Nov. 11. 2024 Ohio State played Akron, Western Michigan and Marshall in September, didn't beat a ranked team until November, missed the B1G Championship, yet earned a CFP home game over a Tennessee team that hammered NC State at a neutral site in non-conference. We've been over 2025 Indiana's non-con slate already.
To be clear, it's not as if no Big Ten teams play tough non-conference games. Ohio State visits Texas on Sept. 12 after hosting the Longhorns last year, and Michigan hosts Oklahoma to complete their home-and-home. Michigan goes to Austin next year, paying back the Longhorns' 2024 trip to the Big House. Ohio State and Alabama play a home-and-home in 2027-28. Yet, Indiana, Oregon, Penn State, USC, Washington, and Nebraska each regularly decline the opportunity to challenge themselves in non-conference play. It's actually a significant challenge for the conference and its over-paying TV partners. No offense to the teams involved, but San Jose State (at USC, Aug. 29), North Texas (at Indiana, Sept. 5), Western Michigan (at Michigan, Sept. 5), and Kent State (at Ohio State, Sept. 19) all play in prime network TV windows because the pool of exciting Big Ten games in those weeks is shallower than a shot glass.
But as long as the CFP selection committee keeps rewarding them, and Fox, CBS and NBC keep cutting checks, the Big Ten has no plans to change unless and until the SEC agrees to a 24-team CFP bracket.
"We've talked a lot about scheduling in our AD room and what's coming next," Petitti said. "Our focus now is seeing clarity around the Playoff, and access and how that's going to work before we make the next decision."
The SEC added its ninth conference game with the implicit understanding the CFP would grow from 12 teams to 16. That did not, and will not, happen. The Big Ten has convinced the ACC and the Monster Energy Big 12 to join them in support of 24. And so the B1G won't agree to go to 10 (regular season Power 4 games) until the SEC agrees to 24.