Everything Tony Petitti said from the podium at Big Ten Media Days

Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti addressed reporters from the podium at Big Ten Media Days on Tuesday. He discussed the future of the conference and previewed the upcoming 2026-27 season.

Here’s everything Petitti said, via ASAP Sport:

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TONY PETITTI: Good morning. On behalf of the entire Big Ten Conference I’d like to welcome all of you to the 2026 Big Ten Football Media Days presented by Discover.

We return to Chicago for the first time since 2019. Thank you for your attendance today and for the work you put in throughout the year covering college football, the Big Ten, and our 18 member institutions.

Before we get started, we’d like to take a moment to remember former Minnesota Baseball Head Coach John Anderson, who we unfortunately lost on Sunday. John is the Big Ten’s all-time winningest baseball coach. We send our condolences to John’s family, friends, and the University of Minnesota.

2025/26 was a remarkable year for the Big Ten with 13 national championships. We became the only conference to ever win national championships in football and men’s and women’s basketball with three different schools — Indiana, Michigan, UCLA — in the same year.

Indiana’s win gave us our third straight football title. The conference also earned 38 individual national championships, 32 National Player of the Year Awards, ten National Coach of the Year Awards, 80 Academic All-Americans, and 222 professional draft picks, including the overall No. 1 draft pick in six different sports.

Add to that broadcast and attendance records, we are confident that the Big Ten is in the strongest position in its history. We’re just 32 days from the football season kicking off with USC on August 29th on NBC. That is also the week that our partner Abbott will kick off the third year of the We Give Blood Drive. Last season donations from the Big Ten saved up to 250,000 lives.

We also look forward to the opening of college football’s newest stadium just up the street, Ryan Field, which debuts on Friday night, October 2nd, with Northwestern taking on Penn State on Fox.

We know all 18 of our teams are getting ready to open their camps with high expectations for the 2026 season. In addition to winning three consecutive titles, the Big Ten has dominated the first two seasons of the expanded College Football Playoff. Seven Big Ten teams combined for the nation’s best 11 wins, more than double the next closest league.

There have been 22 games played in the first two years of the 12-team CFP. 14 of those 22 games have featured Big Ten teams, including two games with Big Ten teams facing each other.

We are excited about the depth across the league this season led by the strongest group of quarterbacks in the nation. Seven teams with starting experience, including ten returning to their teams.

We have 100 players who have earned all-conference honors returning this season. Our 18 coaches have a combined 202 seasons of head coaching experience in over 1,500 wins.

We’d like to welcome Kyle Whittingham in Michigan, Pat Fitzgerald at Michigan State, Matt Campbell at Penn State, and Bob Chesney at UCLA. We look forward to all 18 of our coaches meeting with you this week.

The timing of our media days coincides with the almost hourly news being generated around the Protect College Sports Act. The appreciation of those working in DC working diligently. We cannot thank our chancellors, presidents, and athletic directors enough for their continued alignment support, and work on this important piece of legislation.

Over the past ten days there have been hundreds of phone calls discussing key aspects of the Bill. It is important to understand that this bill sets forth very specific language on how college sports will operate going forward.

After a lot of productive work, it is absolutely imperative that we see the amended language of the Bill. We cannot change our position until we see the amended Bill and have an opportunity to share it with our leadership.

I will say, literally just prior to walking up here, we expect to see the amended Bill shortly. It could come as early as this afternoon, and we will dedicate — and our staff will — their time to making sure we review it and getting back to our leadership as quickly as possible. So we are literally on standby. It’s happening this morning.

One of the first acts of our new head of communications, David Basset used to tell me to keep my remarks really short and allow you to ask more questions, so I’ll turn it to you.

THE MODERATOR: Questions for Commissioner Petitti.

Q. Walk me through the process of adding Chris McIntosh and that new role and what impact has he had in the conference office since he started in May?

TONY PETITTI: Yeah, thank you. Mac has been great. He’s been in for a couple of months now. I think as we continue to evolve in the office and you face the kind of issues that we do on a daily basis in the conference office and so much that we did around establishing CSC, I think it became really clear that having expertise from campus is critical.

We have great staff that have experience in lots of different places, but Mac’s leadership position at Wisconsin really made it an obvious choice. Really well-respected by our athletic directors and our leadership. He’s involved in helping us on these long-term issues every day and the strategic part in not only shaping it going forward, but bringing that perspective and able to talk to ADs not only in our league, but across the country as well.

It’s given us a lot more depth. We’re facing unprecedented challenges, and we need campus experience in the office.

Q. Today Ohio State announced a big deal with Chase as their jersey patch sponsor. The Big 12 has done something kind of conference-wide. Has the Big Ten considered something like that, or are you leaving it to the schools to do the jersey patches on their own?

TONY PETITTI: Thank you. So about almost two years ago we started to begin the analysis of what jersey patches would be. It was obvious that it was coming over the last two seasons. It took some time to get it approved.

So we started doing work with some media consultants to figure out the best path. Does it make sense to allow the institutions to do it themselves? Are there certain sports you want to hold back? Should we have a conference policy?

Our analysis and the work we did with our members led to the decision that it’s best for the conference to review those decisions at an institution-based level. That’s where we are. It doesn’t mean around championships you might do something different with an additional patch, but the core thing, we think it was best left up to the strength of our institutions, let them do the deals that they need to do and kind of go from there. That’s where we are. That was done after a lot of consulting and work with the group.

Q. I wanted to does you specifically about the Protect Sports Act and what exactly are the areas that you feel need to be rectified before you can swing your support towards that act?

TONY PETITTI: I would divide the bill into the two sections that it’s in. So taking the second section first, which is really around the SBA and conference alignment and scheduling requirements and all of those things and what you can do in third party involvement and the makeup of conferences. We feel really strongly that that language has to be right.

So making sure that we get the protections. There seems to be alignment with the direction of the center. They seem to understand our issues. We’ve been aligned with the SEC. It’s something if Congress is going to be involved in deciding who can be in which conference and when you move and how you move and how you schedule based on certain things happening, we just need to get that right.

We want to be 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. I’m optimistic that we should hopefully be able to move through that section quickly in this process when we get the Bill.

The second part, Scott, is the front of the Bill, and that gets into issues around state preemption, particularly around the recruiting space. What can states still be put in a position where they can enact recruiting laws that will make it uneven in terms of how we compete? We need national standards. We’ve been clear about that. The liability prejudices.

I think as you know, as has been reported, there’s a lot being talked about around retention pools and how the House settlement should work around the revenue share with student-athletes and the NIL opportunities. That’s all very specific language that has to work together with the settlement. So we need to see the language on all of that.

Also, there’s been — we’ve put a lot of discussion in about the high school space and how money is spent in high school recruiting. I would say all that has to come together.

Look, the last thing I’ll say to your question is we’ve got to look at the totality of the Bill. We recognize it’s not going to be perfect for us in every one of those places, but at the end of the day, when the conference gets the Bill, hopefully today, and we work through it, are we in a position where it does a lot more — it provides a lot more help than not.

If we can get to that place, then we can move into a position very quickly to support it. But again, until I see where we are, we’re not quite ready to say that but I’m optimistic that today will be a really good day.

Q. The SEC leadership was talking semi-seriously at least at least about breaking off from the NCAA at their media days. What sort of perspective or even contingency plan do you have if those conversations become a little bit more real?

TONY PETITTI: Yeah, I would say the focus is sort of in stages. The first thing we are focused on is getting the Bill right. It’s taking up a tremendous amount of time.

While we’re doing that, I think if the Bill can address some of the changes we need to make to the CSC and NIL go, and the way the House settlement operates, if we can’t get that help in the Bill, then I think the first place you go is with our colleagues in the other conferences.

You know, SEC, ACC, Big 12, PAC-12, also a defendant, and the NCAA. Like how do we come together to make the necessary changes to the way the settlement is operating so we can give our athletic directors, our coaches, our student-athletes a system that seems to be more sustainable and more predictable.

It’s not the fault of the CSC. They’re a start-up. They’re trying to implement the rules we put in front of them. We have to look at what the behavior is. So that’s the first thing. Can we come together? It’s not breakaway, but 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? That’s also really difficult. To your question, we absolutely have to do everything we can to prepare for every one of those things.

So while we’re focusing on the Bill, we have teams of people that are trying to set the groundwork of if you don’t get the Bill, what happens with the CSC and how it operates?

Q. I wanted to ask, a lot of the reporting on the College Football Playoff has structured it that it seems like the Big Ten has one position, the SEC has another, and it’s been very difficult to mold those two together. Just curious, as you look at it what the Big Ten stance is to move this thing forward, come to some type of resolution on it, and what’s going to be best for all the stakeholders, the colleges, the kids, the networks, and everybody else involved?

TONY PETITTI: Yeah, I mean, the first thing I’ll say about working with the SEC on the playoff and working with Greg specifically, I’ve never heard him say that he won’t do the work and consider 24.

I think he’s been public about certain preferences he has, but he’s committed himself to doing the work around all formats. And we’ve done the same thing. We have strong opinions about where the right path is. I think there’s been an evolution since we were here last year about how people feel about 24 at this point, and we’ve made adjustments in our league.

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.

So we work every day with it. I think the path is, you know, you’ve got to be able to do this in a way that allows you to not play championship games, as obviously significant economic value in our championship games across the P4. So we have to understand where that is. If we find the value, I think it just changes the tone of the conversations.

It’s been completely collaborative. And even though the memo gives the SEC and the Big Ten more the operating decision-making in this process, we’ve really included on a daily basis our colleagues in the ACC and Big 12 and everybody else in the CFP room.

We’re trying to do this together. I think there’s been a lot of movement among coaches and ADs around the country that 24 is the right number, but we have to see if it has the right value, and we have to understand that process and how we schedule it and when.

Q. I’m just wondering from your perspective, can college sports survive long-term if you continue to have $50 million football rosters, and what will the sport look like if Congress is not able to pass any legislation?

TONY PETITTI: I think the biggest thing to your question is every institution is slightly different in terms of the resources, how many sports they sponsor, what their revenue profile is. I think the thing that we’re focused on is trying to get to a sustainable growth level in terms of what the revenue share looks like and the NIL opportunities for student-athletes.

I don’t think you’ll talk to an AD or even a coach or anybody in the country that will tell you that exponential growth, every portal, is the right model. We need to get to a place where we can have a model of growth that’s more realistic and looks like more what our revenue growth could possibly be. I think that’s where that is.

On the good side of all of this like that’s away from the transactional nature, is that we’re fortunate that fans are coming to watch and give us their time in record numbers. We have that going really well. We’ve just got to solidify this other piece.

A lot of businesses would really be worrying about the first piece, which is how do I engage with my fans and my customers and how do I grow my audiences? We’re doing that better than we ever have. I think the 2014 playoff is an opportunity to expand that. I think what you are seeing in women’s sports and Olympic sports in terms of the record attendance numbers and viewership. Volleyball is growing by leaps and bounds. We’re excited about bringing four teams to Wrigley.

So I think you’re seeing all that, but I think the key thing, to your question, is we have to get to some kind of — some level of growth that’s more realistic in terms of how the costs keep rising.

Q. Do you believe that these three national championships sitting right here on your right side have something to do with the dispute between the Bill and things of that nature and the SEC possibly? I know you said you didn’t want to use breaking off, but becoming their own in a sense.

TONY PETITTI: I think to your question, look, I think these three trophies are just the reflection of the commitment of our institutions to play great football. We have great coaches, and we attract incredible student-athletes across all of our sports. Football, no different.

I think we’ve made the investment and the resources. This model, we’ve been able to succeed in the current model. It doesn’t mean we don’t want to make the changes to it. We think we can be successful in virtually every model, but that’s where we are today.

The goal is to continue to recruit and have the best student-athletes there coached by great people, give them the best access to facilities and resources, and that’s what we do in football and across everything else we’re doing.

Thank you.

Q. 5 for 5 was supposed to sort of simplify the eligibility issue. We’ve obviously seen already some TROs and injunctions, lawsuits in that respect. What’s your level of confidence that 5 for 5 holds up legally? And then what’s going to be the course of action if it doesn’t and all of these seniors get another year?

TONY PETITTI: Yeah, that’s place where the Bill sort of sets a go-forward paradigm where they’re going to enshrine 5 for 5 in the Bill. It’s NCAA policy. I think what you are referencing is the fact that when you make a transition from one system to another, there are student-athletes that are going to feel that they were caught in that transition and they’re trying to figure out where that is.

What you’ve seen is a bunch of cases filed. We’ve asked the Senators to include some sense. These cases are so new. Can we get some protection so you help us get this system in place? I don’t know if that help is coming or not in the bill. We haven’t seen it. I don’t know if they’re going to expand the protections to cover that.

But you’re what you’re alluding to is just this problem we have in the NCAA, when you make a change, there’s still the look-back piece that makes it hard to get to the next place.

And so I think over time it will be okay, but we’re in this transition mode where we change the rule, and there are student-athletes that say, well, what’s the timing of that rule applying to me? So that’s where we are.

I think one of the things that’s been really difficult is what you see is, like, by going into State court, it’s more productive on the plaintiff’s side, so it makes it harder.

Again, it’s the same thing. We want the rules to be the same for everybody.

Q. You mentioned the SEC and being in alignment on the legislation. You mentioned the SEC in regards to the playoff. How would you characterize the relationship between the Big Ten and the SEC right now? Are you friends? Are you competitors? Are you partners? Are you frenemies? What are you guys?

TONY PETITTI: I’ll take it from a couple of things. I’m going to start with our fans. Our fans, and I think the SEC fans, they really like the rivalry. I think, you know, it would be great if we played each other more. I think from the fans’ perspective having a rivalry with the Big Ten and the SEC is a great thing, right?

You see the games when we play them. When we play them in the CFP, when we play them in the regular season, which isn’t that often right now, but everybody is already pointing to Ohio State going down to Austin and playing and Oklahoma going to Michigan. We’ve got others.

I think on that side of it from the fans’ point of view it couldn’t be better. That’s a great thing to have. Fans really want to compete. They want to talk about which league is better. Great, let’s just keep doing that.

On the work side of it, we’re taking on some of the most complicated things that have happened in the space, and we’re doing it together every single day. I literally have talked to Greg Sankey more than five times already this morning about the Bill. This goes on lots of issues.

At the end of the day, we very rarely — early in the job when we first started to get to know each other was like, hey, we’re not always going to agree, but we’re going to do it in a way where we’re transparent and respectful and we’ll both fight hard for our leagues and go from there.

I would say I think people point to the playoff to try to make it something bigger than it is. They’re doing what they think is best, and we’re doing what we think is best, and we’ll see where it evolving to over time. I don’t think there’s that much daylight at the end of the day.

To the heart of your question, the fans love the rivalry. We want to double down on that because it’s the right thing for all of our sports to play those games and then secondly, I think as a working partner, I can tell you I don’t think it could be much better, to be honest with you.

Q. With expansion in the CFP changing the landscape, what do you think is the biggest challenge or issue facing the Big Ten over the next five years?

TONY PETITTI: That’s a great question. We look at it all the time. I think the first thing is understanding and bringing some sort of level of — the word sustainable gets overused a lot in our space about what the go-forward is. I think it’s more predictability.

I think coaches, ADs, people that operate in the system want to know that the rules are the same for everybody, that they apply evenly, and doesn’t mean that everybody is going to have the same resources. That’s just not going to happen in the college athletic space. Even if you make a decision that you’re going to have some kind of cap and you make the cap harder, you’re still going to have discrepancy in resources. You have to understand and respect that.

So we talk about with our ADs we want to have as much competitive balance inside our league as possible, and then when we exit the play in national championships, when we go into NCAA tournaments in every sport that we compete in, that we’re best suited to compete and win national championships.

So finding that sweet spot where you have a system that allows you to have as much competitive balance when we line up to play our regular seasons and then when we send our teams out to go play for national championships, we can actually say that we’re in a good spot, it’s fair, and we have a great shot to win.

Q. With the news coming out of the SEC last week about real conversations taking place about them potentially seceding from the NCAA, your reaction, your thoughts?

TONY PETITTI: Yeah, again, I feel we addressed this a few minutes ago. I think when I talk to Greg when and what they’re trying to do, I think it’s just incredible effort to get this bill right. That’s all about staying together. Getting this bill right is all about staying together in the system we have.

I think the second path is going to be if we can’t get the Bill, can we come up with a system that improves CSC? I think all that work is going to be doing it together.

Look, if those things don’t happen, I think every league is going to be in the position to say, what are we going to do that et cetera better than what we have now? Do we have to do it ourselves?

Again, I think like breakaway is a word that creates a lot of emotion. It’s not — I’ve never heard that anybody doesn’t want to play anybody else. We want to schedule more good games that our fans expect. We just got to get to a system that allows us to do that.

And I know, to be fair, after his comments, I know the last couple of days when he addressed it, it seemed like he was sort of pointing out that maybe the reaction to it wasn’t quite what meant.

Q. Obviously the SEC went to nine games this year, and they’re also requiring teams to play another game against a team from the ACC, the Big 12, Big Ten, Notre Dame. I don’t think you guys have a rule like that. Would you mandate something like that? Have there been questions about, conversations about implementing that in the Big Ten?

TONY PETITTI: Yeah, we’ve talked a lot about scheduling in our AD room and with our coaches about what’s coming next and what’s the right way to do things.

I will tell you that our focus now is seeing clarity around the playoff and access and how that’s going to work before we make the next decision.

Q. The SEC talked last week a lot about how it still believes it’s the best conference based on depth. I wonder how you react to that and where do you feel the Big Ten is at not just with the championship teams, but just overall as a depth league?

TONY PETITTI: I’m not going to get into who is better or not. I will say something I think that gets overlooked in our conference a lot. You cannot send your top teams out into the CFP unless they’ve played — and have them be successful, which we have been very successful — if they’re not going through a gauntlet in the regular season.

This idea that the middle of our conference isn’t hard is just not right. At the end of the day, our teams are ready for the CFP. Our travel looks like the CFP travel. You’re going all over the country. How we play, the difficulty in the road in the Big Ten. I just think that’s overlooked.

The reason why we’ve been so successful is our teams are prepared. The best teams in any given season play each other, that’s great. That prepares them. But you also get through a lot of really difficult games. You can’t be ready to go play in the postseason after you think you’ve played something easy. It just doesn’t happen.

It’s something that gets overlooked in our league. We have a difficult league. It’s tough to win on the road in the Big Ten, for even the best teams.

Q. For college football fans that value the week-to-week urgency of the regular season, can you tell them why they should be okay with a 24-team playoff?

TONY PETITTI: I think for a number of reasons. I think the system in the 24 is something we should point to, and I think when I go back and think about playoff formats and having some experience with this at MLB, even though MLB’s regular season is a very different season. I totally understand the difference.

The idea is keeping as many teams in contention for as long as possible. Play as many meaningful games for as long as you can. Secondly, the format creates all kinds of incentives. If you think about a 24-team playoff, right, a bunch of teams are going to be ranked between 16 and 24 that are just trying to make sure they’re in.

You’re going to have teams playing until the very end to see if they’re in. You’re going to have teams playing to see if they can get a home game. So every game is going to matter because your seeding is always going to be determined by somebody else.

It’s not the NFL where your record tells you where you are, right, in the division. This is something different.

This is going to be seeded by a committee. You’re always playing. It’s a big advantage to be one of the eight teams to get a bye. It’s a big advantage to be seeded one and two. You have the best path to the semifinal. It’s a lot different to go on the road in the first round game than it is to host one in your stadium.

I think we’ve got a lot of different incentives all across the format that keep you playing hard until the very end.

Secondly, I think the idea that we’re playing more competitive games is going to be crucial. I just think giving fan games late in the season and there’s another piece of it. We shouldn’t operate — we’ve got institutions making incredible investments in football, and it’s really important to maintain that commitment to invest, and you have to have opportunity to play to maintain that investment.

While the bowl system has done great things for college football for a really long time, when you get into a playoff world like this, it takes up all the air and so success is defined very specifically about the playoff.

So we just got to — I just firmly believe we create the access. Look, I know there’s things out there we get asked all the time. This fan poll said this. This poll said that. I’m confident we’ll fill our stadiums, and we will have really large audiences watching these games if we expand.

Q. A lot of coaches in this conference and across the sport have talked about if it goes to 24, the calendar and how difficult it is to build rosters and play in the Playoffs at the same time. What’s the conference’s stance on if it does go to 24 or regardless of that, of just fixing the calendar?

TONY PETITTI: And you also need to add on top of that, which I learned in talking to our coaches, quarter schools versus not quarter schools. It just creates a lot of additional complexities about the windows and how we set these things up.

Look, it’s really tough. We have to worry about NFL competition and how we balance all of that and when we schedule and go across. But look, I understand the concern from the coaches. It’s really difficult to recruit and build your roster in the middle of the postseason. There’s no comparison of anybody else being asked to do that.

When Dan is up here and Ryan and Kirk, schools that have gone deep across, when you ask them, they’ll tell you that because they’re focused on multiple things.

You also have coaches who are being tapped to go take other jobs and their focus; it gets to be really difficult. It is not the ideal system.

We as a league were a spring portal league. It wasn’t unanimous in our league at all, but we tried to gravitate for more of the spring. We did not carry the day with our colleagues on that discussion, so this is where it is. But it is difficult. To understand what you’re putting coaches through as they’re trying to play the most important part of their season, I haven’t heard a good idea to fix it, to be honest.

Starting earlier? I’m not sure how much earlier we can start. We have different opinions about that in our room as well. You’ll probably hear that from some of our coaches.

Q. I’m curious, with the Protect College Sports Act, the majority leaders have come out and said talks have been progressing over the weekend, but with the recess coming up. I’m curious how important that timeline is in these discussions to get the Bill passed? I know you’re waiting on revisions, too.

TONY PETITTI: Yeah, I mean, we had a Zoom with the three Senators. I think there were six commissioners on. Pete Bevacqua from Notre Dame, a bunch of staff on, to talk about I think a lot of what they said is the timing.

Look, we are ready to review it. I mean, we can only go as fast as getting the paper. We are not the experts in this legislative calendar. We’re not deciding when something goes to the floor, but what we’ve pledged is if we can get the changes, I’m sure there’s going to be back and forth.

I don’t think anybody expects that we’re going to get the changes today and we’re just going to check the box and say it’s all good. There’s going to have to be back and forth. Then we have to get our leadership on. To be fair, we’ve been doing this in close communication with the SEC. We’ll probably continue to do that.

So there’s work to do. We’ll go as fast as we can, but the deadlines are — like you should know, we sent comments back to the Senators on July 3rd. It’s taken time. I think partly they’ve got complicated issues to work out among themselves.

Q. You talked about the importance of keeping the Big Ten Championship game. How much of that is in jeopardy if the Playoffs do expand to 24 teams?

TONY PETITTI: Yeah, I think it’s pretty much we won’t be playing a championship game if we go to 24. I think that’s been pretty settled in terms of when we make this decision as a league, are we going to support 24, that’s where you start the conversation. Are you willing to give up your championship game to have the expanded Playoff?

I think even in today’s — I think there’s does discussion about it now. When you talk to the coaches up here who have played in the game as they get ready for the postseason, there’s a lot of conflicting incentives. It’s still very powerful to win a Big Ten championship, and teams play hard. They want to win that game, but you’re talking about a pretty tough journey to go all the way through and where you are playing next and what happens if a team loses that game, they don’t get a bye, and they have to go play relatively quickly.

I think we just have gotten past that. We think overall if we expand the playoff and have the access we need, we’d be willing to make that trade. As great as our championship has been, it’s been wildly successful. We’ve had incredible games the last couple of seasons, but I still think we’re willing to do that because we believe that access is still the most important thing.

Q. When you talk about the middle of the conference, how do you sort of make sure that with the financial strain of today’s game and NIL, revenue share, all these elements, that there’s still a reasonable success that those teams can achieve?

TONY PETITTI: When I say the middle of the conference, I’m not sure who that actually is in any given season. That could be different in any given year. It’s not like we have an official middle. It goes up and down how teams are playing and how they’re built.

I think it’s sort of a reference to what I said before. It’s coming up with a system that allows the NTCB (ph) to be as close as possible to compete. The current system doesn’t really do that. There’s no way you can actually stop spending in this system because you’re not required to.

So if committee with get to a place to do that, by definition, if it slows down it will bring more schools closer together. Do I think we can erase the entire gap? No, I don’t think that’s possible. But we can have a system that puts it in place where it’s closer and see where we go.

I think that that access is really important. If you’re not — there are going to be certain places that still can spend more, but if you expand the Playoff and give opportunities across where your roster is, you can have a roster that maybe has less investment, about but if for some reason you shot the lights out, can you get into the postseason.

Q. I was wondering, Tony, is it a little bit sad that y’all have had to turn college athletics to the Federal Government to save yourself from yourselves? Like you said earlier, the jest of this so you can’t get sued down the road, because obviously every state has its own rules they’re playing by, et cetera. I’m just wondering what your take is on that?

TONY PETITTI: I wish you asked me that after I saw the Bill today, but I’ll try to do it before I see it the best I can.

Look, I think all of us have asked a form of your question. I mean the commissioners and people going down there. You are asking for help, and you are getting — and when you get help, when you ask for help, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to go exactly the directions where you asked.

Clearly, just to really bring it down to a micro-level, we went down there and we were never talking about conference realignment. I never had a conversation about that. I’ve been down there 21 times in 38 or 39 months. That wasn’t there, but it’s in the Bill. So we have to react to it and make a decision.

I think the heart of your question is right. When you ask for help, it’s not going to be the perfect path that you thought you wanted. We preferred a much skinnier Bill than this Bill. That is not the reality right now.

So we’ve got to work within the framework of what’s happening and make decisions about it as a totality, but yeah, your question is spot-on.

I would say I frame the question differently: Is there more good here than not, right? That’s the way to look at it.

Q. What has it been like working with Scott Dolson and Curt Cignetti and Indiana during the historic run that they’ve been on, of course, winning a championship last year?

TONY PETITTI: Yeah, I mean, look, you sort of saw it right away in the start of that first season when the winning started across, and I think there was skepticism about lots of things around Indiana and their first year when they went to Notre Dame and played a tough — they lost to a team that made the final, and I think that somehow that season was sort of looked at in a way that wasn’t respectful in terms of how good that football team was.

You saw them double down and come out and do what they did last year, going through a difficult schedule and an incredible postseason run and the way they played and dominated across most of the games they played.

Look, I mean, I think everybody will tell you in the Big Ten all the people that get to work with Scott, he’s tremendous to work with. He’s collaborative. He cares deeply about the entire league. He fights hard for Indiana.

I think Cig is unique in terms of what his focus is. I think obviously the decision to bring Cig into the league has been something that you just can’t imagine this when this hire was made and the success. We’re obviously really extremely happy for the way it’s worked out there and the quality of player and the program and the reaction.

More importantly, the reaction from the fans and just what that is now on a Saturday at Indiana. It’s just absolutely great.

Q. I wanted to ask particularly about rivalries. You mentioned the SEC and the Big Ten. For a program like Iowa and then Iowa State, Big 12-Big Ten, that’s only contracted Iowa and Iowa State, the Cy-Hawk rivalry, only contracted through 2027. I’m curious as to whether you would endorse the continuation of a rivalry like that with an in-state rival as opposed to maybe one of the other of the, quote, unquote Super Two?

TONY PETITTI: For the most part, you should know, we’re scheduling nine of the 12 games. Our institutions are figuring out how they want to play, and there’s obviously a long history of that game. Beth is responsible for making those decisions.

It’s an important rivalry in the state. It means a lot. I think what we want to do in the league is allow and encourage and have a system that allows our schools to make those decisions and play. So that’s the way we think about it, no matter what the rivalry game is.

I think fans have an expectation about those types of games, and I think my sense is in our league people work hard to preserve them.

Q. We saw this summer how gambling can derail a player’s career in college football. What is the conversation at the conference level about educating athletes about the perils of gambling and things of that in a nature?

TONY PETITTI: Yeah, from the very first kind of days in getting this job one of the things I asked about is what do we do in that space, because clearly, the environment around betting on sports is so different with young people doing it.

It starts with you have young people getting accounts that their parents are actually signing them up for. You have a lot of different things happening. The stigma around all of that has changed.

It’s prevalent. Kids are growing up with that all around them, and we need to be really protective. We use IC360 ProhiBet. So I think it’s a combination of things. It’s constant education, which we’ve tried to create programs that our schools can use. They’re doing things themselves.

It’s the monitoring, also, making sure we understand what’s going on. That’s all the way across. Everybody that comes anywhere near one of our games, whether it’s players, officials, administrators, making sure they understand what’s at stake.

These are really bad places to make mistakes. The consequences are really, really difficult when you make a mistake, and they’re hard to come back from. So I think we feel the burden to educate and monitor and get this right.

I think we’ve been very clear, also. I really applauded our student-athletes, who we sent a note to Charlie Baker, to say we’ve got to get out of prop betting on college athletes. I don’t understand why we do it.

There’s no reason to have the pressure that kids feel because they scored 14 points in a basketball game instead of 15 or they didn’t have 100 yards receiving in a game. We don’t need to do that.

These kids are all on social media. They feel that pressure. They see it. We’ve had to escort officials out of games to their car because of people upset about this. It’s a big topic. It’s only going to be more difficult, and the only way we can do it is by commitment to provide resources to it.

We are providing way more resources in the space than we did two years ago.

Q. I was hoping you could comment on whether or not you have seen Tommy Tuberville’s student-athlete ad as an alternative to the College Sports Bill that you are about to see and whether or not the league has any opinion on that?

TONY PETITTI: I think Senator Tuberville’s Bill is different. It’s much skinnier. It’s focused on transfers and eligibility. When we were down there, I was down in the Hill just a week or so ago and met with Senators, and some of them actually prefer that and they made it clear in meetings that I had that that Bill seems to make more sense.

That bill is similar to The Score Act in some ways that didn’t make it out of the House. I think you got to choose a path that has a realistic chance of passing. While we appreciate all the time he spent on this. He obviously deeply cares about it. He gave his life to college athletics. It’s just we have to pick this is what’s in front of us right now, and we’ve got to work hard to get it to a place we can get to support it.

I hope we can. We’ll see more today whether we actually can get to that place.