Tony Petitti and the Big Ten have a plan. Is anyone else behind it?
The Big Ten commissioner goes long with The Inside Zone.
LAS VEGAS — Tony Petitti is not a suit-and-tie guy. Sure, that has been his get-up for the cameras this week at Big Ten media days, but he has been happy to largely ditch that look after his previous life working for Major League Baseball.
“I was known at MLB for wearing a suit more than anybody else,” the Big Ten commissioner told The Inside Zone. “My office was next to Rob’s (Manfred’s), so I pretty much always wore suit and ties. I didn’t know which owners were coming in.”
These days, Petitti is almost always wearing a quarter-zip with Jordans. He is more in his element then.
Shortly after becoming the Big Ten commissioner, he was at a meeting with his peers from other conferences. One of the researchers gave a presentation about sports fans.
“One of the things he said is: ‘Fans really hate when they see people in suits on the sidelines of games,’ ” Petitti said, laughing. “I looked at Greg (Sankey) and said: See, I told you.”
In his day-to-day life, Petitti is disarming in a way that has clearly spoken to his conference’s office staff, its athletic directors and its football coaches, nearly all of whom have publicly backed their boss through this latest crusade to re-shape the College Football Playoff in the Big Ten’s favor.
The fan part is another matter, one that seemingly took on a life of its own Tuesday when Petitti said, among other remarks during his media days press conference: “8-4 is a winning percentage, if you project that winning percentage in every other sport, I'm pretty sure you make the postseason.”
Here he goes again, the general consensus went. The city slicker from Queens with a pro sports background has lost touch with what makes college football unique.
Petitti sat down with The Inside Zone on Wednesday for a wide-ranging conversation on the state of college sports and his league’s outsized influence on it. He defended the Big Ten’s position on wanting four automatic bids for both itself and for the SEC in a proposed 16-team Playoff format, also known as the 4-4-2-2-1 model, and he shared the origin story of this idea. His eyes lit up when recalling some memorable moments from his earlier TV jobs, and the kid in him really came out when talking about his father’s influence as a New York City cop.
It was a candid conversation, and he asked that anything directly about himself be off the record. Do enough of these types of interviews, and you can tell who’s authentic and who’s exhibiting false modesty. Petitti was as genuine as it gets. Ask anybody in the league office, and they will privately tell you that their commissioner firmly believes in letting the work speak for itself.
Is that honorable? Yes. Is that the best approach while in a seat as influential as his is? Debatable.