The Big Ten’s large mouths have lost the narrative war to the SEC so badly, it’s a small miracle when something attributable to a Big Ten supply nowadays isn’t accompanied by amusing observe.
The league’s newest misstep wasn’t even meant for public consumption. Yet in some way, it ended with Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti stumbling into one other public spanking whereas his counterpart at the SEC, Greg Sankey, continued to stroll between raindrops and let everybody else really feel the splashback.
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Sources round the Big Ten insist that its absurd proposal to broaden the College Football Playoff to 28 groups wasn’t actually a proposal in any respect however one thing extra akin to a late-night, three-bourbons-down dialog that should not have left the group chat in the first place.
Still, the reality it noticed the gentle of day — with out Petitti instantly disowning it and the SEC one-upping him but once more by saying final week that it could make the wildly popular move to nine conference games in 2026 — confirmed that the competitors between the two heaviest hitters in school sports activities isn’t actually a good battle.
The Big Ten might have gained the final two nationwide titles, however by way of long-term technique and message self-discipline, there’s no comparability. While the Big Ten seems like an out-of-touch company monolith making an attempt to inform us that an 8-4 staff ought to compete for a nationwide title, the SEC sits again, watches their competitor’s sweat drip for a short while and yells “checkmate” after they understand it’ll damage the most.
Remember earlier this 12 months when it appeared like the Big Ten and SEC have been going to collectively champion a 16-team playoff format with every of them getting 4 computerized bids? Once Sankey noticed the place the wind was blowing, he was more than pleased to depart Petitti on Public Relations Disaster Island.
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Well, it is occurring once more. And now some in Petitti’s orbit ponder whether he’s being dog-walked right into a scapegoat swimsuit whereas Sankey’s attain over school soccer evolves into an iron grip.
“As much as the Big Ten and the SEC are joined at the hip on most things right now, Sankey is just a master at keeping his hands clean and never having anything be his fault or the SEC’s fault, even if it is,” one supply informed Yahoo Sports. “I think he probably used Tony a little bit.”
Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti and his convention have loads of concepts for faculty soccer’s future, however none of them make sense. (Dillon Minshall/Yahoo Sports)
Though you may have the ability to accuse the SEC of pulling a chair from underneath the Big Ten when there are sometimes two seats at the desk of dangerous concepts, blame for the 28-team gambit should only go in one direction.
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And it’s a foul thought for all the apparent causes, most obviously that computerized bids for the SEC and Big Ten would put 7-5 groups in rivalry for playoff spots yearly, shredding any semblance {that a} common season sport is vital. It’s additionally unlikely there’s rather more tv cash to squeeze from CFP growth. As it stands, the proposals to go from 12 to 16 are way more about elevated entry to the event for Big Ten and SEC directors who now face a brand new threshold for skilled success than any big payday for his or her leagues.
It’s additionally problematic the Big Ten workplace appears to suppose it might probably simply preserve increasing the school soccer season with out consulting their new enterprise companions — the gamers.
Remember them? The ones whose our bodies would have to endure a 12-game common season plus doubtlessly 5 playoff rounds and perhaps even a convention championship/qualifying weekend in between?
Just think about: It took practically a 12 months of intense negotiations (with a number of years of dialog earlier than that) for the NFL Players Association to agree to a seventeenth common season sport. Now that the Big Ten and the different energy leagues share a little bit slice of income with the gamers, they apparently really feel empowered to broaden the school season to NFL size with out having to negotiate a single factor.
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“That’s always been the mindset,” mentioned Jim Cavale, co-founder of the Athletes.org advocacy group, to Yahoo Sports. “That’s why we’re here. They’ve commercialized the revenue, but they haven’t commercialized the expenses. Adding more games creates health risks and affects what they say is the most important part of the student-athletes’ experience, which is academics.
“If you’re going to add a game and you’re going to use the fact that you’re paying players now as a reason that you can now add games, the players better share in the new revenue from the new game. The whole thing is backwards. They’re just going to create more problems.”
A league with extra self-awareness and a greater technique for public messaging would perceive that such a misplaced thought would roil the delicate waters round collective bargaining, which a majority of faculty presidents are attempting to maintain at bay.
But then once more that is the Big Ten, drunk on energy obliterating most of its competitors by means of cold annexation, believing it is aware of what’s greatest for faculty sports activities the similar manner your neighborhood crank sits at the bar alone each evening ranting about how tousled everybody else’s lives are.
In some methods, not a lot has modified from a dozen years in the past when former commissioner Jim Delany claimed that his league’s presidents would relatively take their ball and go to Division III than submit to a pay-for-play mannequin. It was an absurd bluff, in fact, if not an outright lie, talking to the Big Ten’s longstanding custom of smelling its personal aromas with out understanding which manner the wind is about to blow.
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But these are extra severe instances, and the Big Ten isn’t serving anybody effectively by working in such a cocoon of delusion with a commissioner who appears reluctant to put a public face on the operation.
Though individuals who have labored carefully with Petitti say he’s extremely sharp behind the scenes and totally able to projecting an affable, accessible management for the league, he has largely spent this 12 months in hiding whereas his picture takes on water over poorly conceived playoff growth proposals. The query is why the Big Ten has allowed that to occur in the first place.
There is concern in Big Ten circles not solely about the efficacy of Petitti’s senior workers from a method standpoint, but additionally operationally. The quantity of day-to-day administrative stuff that bypasses Petitti’s lieutenants and finally ends up on his plate is greater than what it must be, sources say, limiting his out there time to be a front-facing advocate that may stand toe-to-toe with Sankey in the public relations wars that can form the future of faculty sports activities.
“He’s a one-man band here and he needs the rest of his staff to do some things,” one supply mentioned. “I wish Tony would take his rightful place on the top of the mountain next to Greg from that standpoint because he’s super smart and what he says makes a lot of sense. But when you let the narrative get cursed in the public, his points never really get (taken seriously).”
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The SEC shouldn’t be innocent in the present state of faculty sports activities and the incapability for conferences to sing from the similar hymnal over CFP growth. But a minimum of there isn’t a mistaking that when Sankey speaks — and he does so usually — he speaks for his members.
The distinction in these two approaches was simple to distinction earlier this 12 months throughout the leagues’ respective spring conferences. The SEC, as they at all times do, invited reporters to a resort in Florida, had each coach and administrator out there to the media and set a tone for all the dialog that adopted over the subsequent few months.
Petitti and his league, in contrast, spent the summer time virtually actually in hiding, holding their conferences in California underneath a cloak of semi-secrecy with media members actively discouraged from exhibiting up lest they commit the mortal sin of informing the public and protecting the Big Ten’s pursuits in the headlines.
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By the time Petitti obtained round to publicly advocating for the so-called “4-4-2-2-1-1-1-1” playoff mannequin that may have assured 4 CFP bids every for the Big Ten and the SEC, the debate was already over. The SEC acknowledged the place the tide of public opinion was heading and deserted ship, leaving the Big Ten arguing principally with itself at a convention media day occasion the place discuss the precise soccer product obtained overwhelmed by administrative trivia.
That didn’t go unnoticed inside the league, together with by Penn State coach James Franklin, who was visibly pissed off with how few media members from the league’s Midwest hub made the trek out to Las Vegas relative to what he noticed when the occasion was in Chicago or Indianapolis.
Having been in the SEC from 2011-13 at Vanderbilt, Franklin understands the worth of spectacle and the way that league makes use of the media to form an agenda. The Big Ten barely appears to attempt.
“It keeps people talking about (the SEC) at a time in the year and it makes them relevant. We’re not doing that,” Franklin mentioned. “We need to be talking about the Big Ten and our programs and the things we have done and make it as accessible to everyone as we possibly can and connecting with the fans.”
When the video games start this weekend, the Big Ten could also be ok to let the soccer product converse for itself. After a whole offseason of being caught on the again foot, it might probably’t come quickly sufficient.