Tony Petitti reveals the Big Ten's stance on automatic qualifiers, play-in games for College Football Playoff

As college football grapples with how to update and modernize the playoff system, only barely into its existence as a more-than-four-team enterprise, ideas continue to clash. Will more automatic qualifiers be added? Play-in games?

The Big Ten and the SEC have advocated for a large number of automatic qualifiers for the two leagues, which has drawn some stark opposition from conferences like the ACC and Big 12, which would see fewer AQs. Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti defended that model in an interview with Joel Klatt on the Joel Klatt Show recently.

“Look, we’ve made a decision about what we think is appropriate for us and what you should have on the at-large side and it’s based off of historic strength and where we think programs are,” Petitti said. “Could there be methods to open that, other ideas that we would consider? I think we’ve been pretty open.

“And we just communicated this in a recent meeting we had in the CFP room, like, look, we’re open to ideas. If there’s better ways to do it or there’s tweaking around the AQ system.”

The Big Ten commissioner, who has largely been silent on playoff issues until his interview with Klatt, provided one rationale for why going to more automatic qualifiers and fewer at-larges makes sense. It’s for simplicity’s sake.

“I just think ultimately it’s going to be very hard to sort of figure out how you expand the field,” Petitti said. “Because the alternative, Joel, to this system is expanding the field and giving the committee more to do. Because if you go to 16 and you have 11 at-large, you’ve just added even more decision-making.

“And the answer is, ‘Well at that point it gets to be easy because you’ll cover everybody.’ No, because the more spots you put into this system, the more difficult decisions you’re facing because teams start to look more alike. They all have a tough road loss, some of them may have stumbled at home in a tough conference game. The sequencing of when you play, you might be at a really difficult place and then have to go back home and play somebody else, or be on the road for two weeks. All of that journey is really relevant, so I think you make it harder.”

So what is Petitti’s solution? He explained. Essentially, adopt the automatic qualifiers as proposed.

“We’re looking to kind of do exactly what you said: reduce the role of the committee, let them focus on seeding, let them focus on the last three at-larges,” Petitti said. “Look, if everybody’s playing play-in games, I don’t know if there was a system, I don’t want to speak for the ACC or the Big 12 or even the SEC about how they would qualify in an AQ world, but we’ve done some modeling that you could have somewhere between 40 and 50 teams after Week 13 that are either in the play-in position or one game back. That’s a lot of teams still alive. Some of them might be less realistic chances than others, but they’re all sort of playing. But you don’t want to get in that mode where you lose that third game and you’re sort of not.

“Because I worry that as the CFP gets better and better, missing it and where you go after that gets to be harder. So you just want to make sure that, again, we’re opening opportunities, qualifying off the field and then seeing where we go.”

That sums up Petitti’s stance on automatic qualifiers pretty well, but what about his view on play-in games? Well, those he is a big fan of.

He believes having play-in games will create some serious intrigue late in the year. Fans stand to benefit.

“I also think, look, I think the play-in weekend, like I’m only going to speak for the Big Ten, but you send some teams out there do-or-die games knowing they have to win to be sure they’re safe, like there could be some really great matchups around our championship game,” Petitti said. “That’s a great weekend for college football.

“The best way to market the sport is to play more good games. You can talk about all the advertising campaigns you want, you can talk about all the slogans and all the promotion and everybody talking, but at the end of the day what fans care about is put more good games in front of them and they’ll definitely watch.”