Josh Pate: Tony Petitti has ‘fundamental lack of coherence’ about what makes college football great

College Football Playoff expansion is once again at the forefront of conversation as stakeholders meet Monday to hear presentations from consultants outlining the merits (and demerits) of several different proposals. The meeting is expected to go over media rights implications, potential scheduling conflicts, the future of conference championship games, the Army-Navy game, and much more.

There won’t be any final decisions made on Monday — the meeting is reportedly designed to be informational — but there’s already been some news from the virtual gathering.

Multiple reports indicate that ESPN began soft-pitching a new CFP expansion proposal to certain conferences over the weekend. The proposed format would expand the playoff to 16 teams but include four play-in games for seeds 13-16, functionally creating a 20-team bracket. The Big Ten is already reportedly opposed to the proposal, as the conference continues to take a hard line on its insistence on expanding to a 24-team format.

Any expansion to the CFP is controversial, especially so soon after stretching the field to 12 teams. Fans have frequently voiced their frustration with such ideas, with the vast majority coming out in favor of either staying at a 12-team format or undergoing a more modest expansion to 16 teams, according to one survey.

Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti doesn’t give those fans much credence. And with the topic of playoff expansion back at the center of the college football world on Monday, Josh Pate responded to Petitti’s recent remarks about expansion from Big Ten Media Days last month.

The wrong people are making decisions about CFP expansion & they don’t care what you think pic.twitter.com/86giMhWUdF

— Josh Pate (@JoshPateCFB) August 10, 2026

“I’ll translate [Petitti’s remarks] for you. ‘Piss on what you think. You’ll take what we give you, and you’ll like it.’ That’s essentially the attitude in the room,” Pate began. “‘Where are you gonna go? You got no other choice.’ That’s the kind of decision maker that I’m not a fan of having in the room.

“When you’re sitting here telling me, ‘Well, playoffs are everything. That’s the only oxygen in the room right now,’ you display a fundamental lack of coherence about what makes this sport great. Whatever even made it a profitable enough venture to attract your attention to begin with. He never mentioned urgency once. He actually never talked about the value of regular-season games. The only time he broached it was in acknowledging, ‘Hey, if we increase the amount of playoff spots, then that’ll lead to more dynamic scheduling.’ My question was, ‘Well, by that logic, why would you stop at 24?’ Because you’re certainly not going to sell me that you stop at 24 to maintain value of regular-season urgency. That’s long since thrown in the blender by the time you get to 24. So by that logic, why not 30? Why not 44? Why not just go full 60? Like, you see how it’s a race to the bottom of the barrel?”

Devaluing the regular season has long been one of the top concerns among expansion skeptics, and Pate raises a salient point: Petitti never even addressed it while advocating for a 24-team playoff.

One of the trickier things about the expansion conversation is exactly where the line is between maximizing postseason excitement, interest, and engagement and disproportionately harming the regular season. The past two seasons of 12-team playoffs didn’t seem to do much harm to the regular season, at least based on the strong regular-season television ratings each of the past two years. But at some point, a larger playoff field and additional emphasis on the postseason will threaten the regular-season product. Does that happen at 16? 20? 24? No one really knows.

But Petitti should at least offer a defense for why his plan won’t neuter the first 13 weeks of the college football season in favor of the last five or six. Maybe then, more fans could get on board with his proposal.