NCAA football news: Why Tony Petitti has had zero talks about 16-team playoff

Big Ten Conference commissioner Tony Petitti has made his stance on College Football Playoff (CFP) expansion clear: It’s 24 teams, or it’s nothing.

Amid the constant debate about increasing the number of teams in the playoff, Pettti, according to Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger, essentially ruled out any attempt at adding just four more teams to bring the CFP total to 16.

“Tony Petitti says his league has held ‘zero conversation’ about a 16-team playoff here at Big Ten spring meetings and suggests that he would not agree to anything other than remaining at 12 or moving to 24,” Dellenger posted on X, formerly Twitter.

Starting with the 2014 season, the CFP remained at four teams for the first 10 years of its existence. During the four-team era, there were numerous complaints, primarily when power-conference champions were left out of the playoff field. The most controversial instance of this was in 2023, the final season with just four teams, when the committee excluded Florida State, the 13-0 ACC champion, and selected 12-1 Texas and Alabama instead because Jordan Travis, FSU’s starting quarterback, was injured.

Now, with 12 teams in the field, complaints remain, and expansion has become the most dominant conversation. However, college football’s powerbrokers have been able to come to an agreement on the details of the expansion.

Some conferences, like the Big Ten, are in favor of abolishing conference championship games and not guaranteeing any conference a specific number of spots in a 24-team format. The SEC, on the other hand, is the biggest roadblock in expanding to 24 teams, as commissioner Greg Sankey said he would prefer to add four more teams before considering additional expansion.

Regardless of the talks, the CFP, at least for this season, will still feature only 12 teams.