RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 2 sourcesBig Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti is hoping Congress or some rule adjustments can fend off the league joining the SEC and breaking away from the NCAA. (Darron Cummings / Associated Press)
After leaders of the Southeastern Conference spent last week warning of a Plan B to potentially “break away” from the NCAA, Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti tried to steer away from that conversation and toward a Congressional solution on Tuesday.
But if Congress can’t pass the Protect College Sports Act in the coming weeks? Well, the conference is already talking contingency plans, Petitti said.
“Breakaway is a word that creates a lot of emotion,” Pettiti said during his annual Big Ten media day address on Tuesday. “Is there another path where if you can’t solve it in the bill and if you can’t solve it with your colleagues, is there some path where you have to have conference-based rules? That’s not necessarily breaking away. It doesn’t mean you’re not going to play anybody else. But is there a path to have rules that we can at least operate from the conference?
“We absolutely have to do everything we can to prepare for every one of those things.”
The future of college football continues to hang in the balance as Congress works to get the two power conferences on board with a bill that has not received their full support. Petitti said on Tuesday morning that he’d yet to see the new language of the Protect College Sports Act, which added revisions to appease the SEC and Big Ten, but expected to see it later Tuesday.
The commissioner said he didn’t expect the bill to be “perfect for us in every one one of those places,” but he expected concessions to be included in the newest version, including potential provisions around a super league, pre-enrollment inducements for high school prospects and a carve-out for up to $20 million in additional cap space to retain players.
Whether those concessions will be enough to get the two power conferences on board remains to be seen. Time is running out for a bill to be passed before Congress takes a lengthy recess, significantly delaying any meaningful reform in college athletics.
“If Congress is going to be involved in deciding who can be in what conference and when you can move and how you move and how you schedule based on certain things happening, we just need to get that right,” Petitti said. “And so we want to make sure that the productive conversations we’ve had the last couple of weeks on that section specifically are reflected in the drafting of the bill.”
Petitti said that the Big Ten would’ve preferred “a much skinnier bill” than the current version, but “that is not the reality right now.”
“Is there more good here than not, right?” Petitti said. “That’s the way to look at it.”
Passing that bill is the primary focus for now. It’s why Petitti has been to Washington 21 times, he said, during his tenure as commissioner. But other uncertainty still looms over the sport.
The Big Ten is still also pushing for a 24-team College Football Playoff, but Petitti said that the conference’s stance has evolved since he first started pushing the idea a year ago.
“We’ve made adjustments in our league,” Petitti said. “We were focused on automatic qualifiers. We’re not focused on that anymore. We’re looking at the committee picking the field of 24. We feel that ultimately will still unlock the power of scheduling that we want.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times .
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