There’s been a lot of talk over the last few months about the possibility of the NCAA Football Playoffs expanding and giving the Big Ten and SEC even more chances to get their favored teams into the field. Until now, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has been doing most of the talking. It feels as though he finally got tired of taking all the slings and arrows and told B1G commish Tony Pettit to step up and offer up his own bad reasons for why he supports an expanded field and more auto qualifiers for his conference.
To Pettiti’s credit, he was able to offer up his explanation without sounding like a whiney toddler the way Sankey managed to do every single time he opened his mouth about the issue. The Big Ten commissioner’s explanation was less “we keep getting wronged” and more “if you want to see exciting non-conference games 16 teams in the playoffs and more B1G auto qualfiiers is how it happens.”
Big Ten boss pitches playoff tweak, says more AQs will boost non-league matchups
Pettit talked to Fox Sports’ Joel Klatt about the situation on Monday and offered up the idea that if the rest of the NCAA goes along with the two biggest conferences in the sport, then things will get better outside of those conferences.
“I understand there was controversy about how many AQs (automatic qualifiers) one league gets or another, the Big Ten commissioner told Klatt. “Let's put that aside for now. I think we're trying to focus on, at least within the Big Ten, we're not asking to be handed anything. We're playing non-conference games. We want to play tough play-in games to get there, and we want to create an incentive for our schools to schedule more non-conference, because if you're qualifying off your conference record…”
It’s certainly a different approach to trying to get people on board with more teams and more auto qualifiers. It will almost certainly get more support than “The SEC should just get more teams in the playoffs because we say so.”
The one thing that this interview seems to indicate is that a new push for expansion and change to the 4-4-2-2-1-3 — four automatic bids for the Big Ten, four automatic bids for the SEC, two automatic bids for the ACC, two automatic bids for the Big 12, three at-large bids and one for the Group of 5- format is coming. And unfortunately for the rest of college football, the Big Ten and SEC will get their way.