Breaking down the 4 Quotes Everyone’s Talking About from Big Ten Media Days

The Big Ten just had its media days in sunny Las Vegas. It was a spirited showing from Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti and Big Ten Coaches. Most of the media days were spent discussing scheduling and the College Football playoff format with them. The college football commissioners are debating about expanding to 16 teams starting in 2 years.

The biggest sticking point is that the Big Ten wants 4 automatic qualifiers from the Big Ten and the SEC, then 2 for the Big 12 and the ACC, the highest group of 5 teams and 3 at-large bids. The SEC and the rest of the conferences prefer the top 5 conference champions and 6 automatic qualifiers. Below are four quotes from the media days, along with a breakdown of what they said.

1) Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti suggests 6-3 in Conference play is a great record

"If you are 6-3 in the Big Ten, I would that’s a great record, If you stumbled in a nonconference games, I don’t know why that disqualifies you”."

Tony Petitti

Translation: This is a ridiculous quote by Petitti, saying that a Big Ten team who are 6-3 in their conference and possibly has a 4th loss in the non-conference should make the College Football Playoff. I understand he is defending his conference, but saying this just makes it seem like the regular season is meaningless. The story about this is that Petitti is trying to get a play-in game tournament in the Big Ten, so he could add more TV revenue for the Big Ten. He has been in favor of the idea of the Big Ten and SEC each getting automatically 4 teams each. This quote goes to the heart of the 4 automatic qualifiers.

2) Indiana Head Coach Curt Cignetti on cancelling non-conference games with Virginia.

"So we figured we’d just adopt an SEC scheduling philosophy"

Curt Cignetti

Translation: I am not going to lie; this was hilarious to me. He is aiming at the SEC in that they play 8 conference games, and some teams will not schedule any good power 4 non-conference opponents. The other thing the SEC does is schedule a weak non-conference game before a big SEC game. The reason Cignetti cancelled the non-conference games with Virginia, though, is that he wants more chances at making the College Football playoff, so he doesn’t want to jeopardize a loss to a good non-conference opponent.

3) Washington Head Coach Jedd Fisch calls for automatic bids into the Playoff

"“Its imperative we need four automatic bids, a nine-game schedule in the Big Ten Conference, we can’t leave it up to chance with a 5-11 combo”. "

Jedd Fisch

Translation: Big Ten coaches made similar comments several times as they want the SEC to go to 9 conference games as well. The Big Ten has been putting pressure on the SEC to add a 9th conference game for a while. The idea that the Big Ten would not get 4 teams in a 16-playoff bracket does not seem likely, but if it happens, it might be a down year for the Big Ten, and thus other conferences deserve more bids to the college football playoff.

4) Oregon Head Coach Dan Lanning calls for tampering penalties

"Yes, there have to be consequences to those actions, if not there will be actions like that."

Dan Lanning

Translation: Dan Lanning makes an excellent point on tampering, and with the transfer portal and NIL, there is a huge debate that tampering is widespread in College Football. Nobody knows how to fix this, but this will continue to be discussed in and around College Football. Given that everyone wants penalties placed on those who tamper, Dan Lanning being the messenger after being accused of tampering earlier this offseason is funny.

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