INDIANAPOLIS – The Big Ten Network had company Tuesday at conference media days, the likes of which it hasn’t known before.
BTN traditionally gets prime placement on the Lucas Oil Stadium field, somewhere between the coaches’ podiums and the breakout tables where reporters cluster around program representatives with questions setting up the new season. From the Network’s set, it can grab players and coaches for interviews virtually at will, the advantage of being the in-house network for the home team.
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This year, however, there were dueling cameras set up across the field, where CBS television personalities ran live through the myriad storylines emerging from football kickoff season. New television partners for a conference now spreading its arms from coast to coast means learning to share, apparently.
But some things haven’t changed. The Big Ten championship game will remain in Indianapolis through at least 2028, per commissioner Tony Petitti, who also suggested the conference is “comfortable” at 18 schools right now.
“We’re focused on the 18 right now,” he said. “A lot of work had been done to integrate USC, UCLA. We started that work over immediately when we added Oregon and Washington. I think we’re really comfortable where we are.
“We’ve got to get this conference right.”
The undercurrent message Petitti even went so far as to spell out later, in a separate discussion of potential conference consolidation in the future:
No matter how much the landscape changes, football is and will remain king.
It will remain so in this town for at least five more years. The Big Ten’s current setup guaranteed the game would stay in the only home it’s ever known through at least this season, the 14th consecutively in which the league has awarded its football championship this way.
Petitti’s announcement Tuesday confirmed it will stay through at least 2028, lending Indianapolis the same ownership of the Big Ten title game Atlanta has come to exert over the SEC championship.
“We’re really comfortable with the decision to stay with football here in Indianapolis in the next four seasons,” Petitti told reporters. “We think it’s the right thing to do.”
But college football still sits squarely in the middle of its “however” phase. There are no periods ending the sentences, just commas allowing change to run on, unrestrained. Petitti quite literally followed that affirmation of “the right thing to do” by admitting the conference isn’t married to Indianapolis — or anywhere — forever.
“Having said that,” Petitti said, “I think you’ll begin to see us expand. I think it’s important to make sure that markets around the country get to experience Big Ten championships. It’s a really good way to connect the conference. I think over time you’ll start to see the geographic footprint expand.”
Petitti’s tactical use of “championships” kept everyone’s options open. But the word choice in answering a question specifically about playing for titles on the West Coast didn’t make much effort to conceal. Petitti’s message was clear: The Big Ten will eventually move west.
When that will be is a matter of debate. What seems easier to sort out.
Obviously, football is now locked in for the foreseeable. Smaller championships wouldn’t make a particularly meaningful impact in terms of brand exposure.
But the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments have no set home for 2025 or beyond, currently. If they sink back into the Indy-Chicago rotation interrupted by last season’s Minneapolis experiment, then they’d revert to Indianapolis next March. But those things tend to be planned in cycles of several years, and there’s a tourism-driven city in the Nevada desert with all the expertise and facilities to host a conference basketball tournament that just lost one with the Pac-12’s folding this summer.
Speculation will only get you so far, but some dots aren’t hard to connect either. Seeing Las Vegas (or some other westward location) in the basketball tournament rotation whenever the next one is finalized would make a lot of sense.
But make no mistake, football still drives this train.
It’s what got CBS that prime placement Tuesday. It’s the whole reason this event expanded from two days to three, to accommodate four formerly Pac-12 schools. And while the Big Ten definitely, absolutely, for sure loves how “comfortable” 18 schools feels, if the conference were to expand again, Petitti was ready with a concise explanation of the potential process.
Yes, he said, it would start with “academics and the fit,” which Petitti called “a really big part of the legacy and the history of the Big Ten.” And then?
“Obviously, the test of really being additive in football is critical. Are you bringing additional value to the conference on football?” Petitti said. “There’s no secret that football is a large, large part of the revenue that’s driven to support the whole ecosystem.”
By the time he’d stepped off the podium Tuesday, Petitti covered all range of topics. He said he’s hopeful a…
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