Big Ten Coaches Favor Play-In, Rather Than Pageant

There is a certain irony in Big Ten coaches banging the drum for automatic qualifiers in any college football playoff expansion while also claiming that auto bids will allow the national championship to be decided on the field.

But they’re not wrong.

Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti and the conference’s coaches have been adamant that if there is an expansion of the College Football Playoff, then the Big Ten and SEC should each receive four automatic bids to the playoffs. Petitti would then like to see play-in games decide which four Big Ten teams get those bids.

Proponents of the auto bids and play-in games will tell you that it will lead to better non-conference scheduling and a more important November.

Opponents will tell you, “Yeah, but do you really want Iowa playing for a spot in the College Football Playoffs?”

One of the other reasons the Big Ten’s coaches are in support of auto bids is because they play nine conference games compared to eight for the SEC.

As long as a selection committee is able to subjectively choose the vast majority of the playoff teams, the SEC is always going to have an advantage over the Big Ten.

Even in a season like last year when the Big Ten had four teams in the 12-team CFP and the SEC only had three, 11-1 Indiana was seeded behind a pair of two-loss SEC teams.

There are some who say they shouldn’t have even made it in over a three-loss Alabama or Ole Miss or South Carolina.

Each two-loss team from both conferences made the playoffs last year, which is the main reason the SEC’s coaches are opposed to adding a nine-game conference slate to their own league.

And as long as the SEC is going to say eight is enough, the Big Ten’s coaches are going to want something in return.

“Until there’s continuity between the conferences, if you’re in the Big Ten, it would make no sense to have anything other than a case to have four qualifiers and have an expanded pool of teams, 14 or 16, because when you play nine conference games, it’s not the same as somebody who plays eight conference games,” Ohio State head coach Ryan Day said last week at Big Ten Media Days.

So what’s the big deal? It’s just one more conference game.

Well, it’s also one more loss conference wide, which will not only cost somebody a playoff bid, but could make somebody’s strength of schedule look a little less impressive.

“Somewhere along the line, whoever’s playing each other in that last game is going to get a loss,” Day explained. ” So when you have a win in week four against a team that loses that extra game, that win may not look as good. It’s just one more loss. Now, it’s one more win, but it’s one more loss for the entire conference. That’s different. It’s just different than when you play eight conference games.”

An SEC team that goes 10-2 could be 9-3 with a ninth conference game. That’s life in the Big Ten, and the Big Ten would like to see that be life everywhere.

And, in return, the Big Ten and SEC receive four auto bids each to the expanded College Football Playoff.

But that’s just one piece of Petitti’s plan. The next part includes play-in games between the Big Ten’s No. 3 team vs. the No. 6 team, and the No. 4 team playing the No. 5 team. There’s still differing thoughts on whether a conference championship game is even needed any longer, but the idea of play-in games is something that Big Ten coaches would love to see happen.

“I mean, play-in games does so much for the entire Big Ten,” said Wisconsin’s Luke Fickell. “The greatest thing about college football, or about NFL football, is there’s so many teams that are still alive come the last two or three weeks of the season. When you really just look at being in the top six in your league, you talk about meaningful games that are played in November on everybody’s campus. I mean, what more can you do? That’s the greatest opportunity that you can have.”

There is also the idea that deciding the playoff teams in an objective manner as opposed to a subjective committee would be a welcome change for a Big Ten that went 5-1 against the SEC in the postseason last year.

“And as we’ve seen with the 12-team playoff, very rarely does whoever everybody thinks is number one, be the one that wins out in the end,” Fickell said. “And if that doesn’t show you the difference between selecting who is to be in the playoffs, as opposed to doing your best job of playing into the playoffs. I mean, you just see it over and over every year. So, I know it would do a lot for us. I think it would do a lot for our league. And I think that idea of ‘wild card weekend,’ that I like to refer to it as, I think it would be something special.”

The distrust of the selection committee is not just about leaving the decisions up to a group of people, but it’s also about what they’re being asked to judge.

To expand on the beauty pageant analogy, the Big Ten teams are being asked to do more. The SEC doesn’t even have to worry about the talent portion of the pageant. They’re just judged on how they look in their evening gowns and swimsuits. Meanwhile, a Big Ten team could be out there laying down an incredible accordion solo and the committee could not care less.

“If we’re going to play nine games and other teams are going to play eight, why would we leave it up to a committee?” asked Washington’s Jedd Fisch. “That doesn’t seem to make any sense to me. What makes sense to me is we should all play the same schedule, whatever that looks like.”

Fisch has spent more than a decade in the NFL throughout his coaching career, so he’s seen what happens when a team gets hot late. He also knows that there is no such thing as the benefit of the doubt when the games actually get played.

“What’s the difference when the New York Giants go ahead and beat the 18-0 Patriots, right?” Fisch said. “And they were a wild card team. Well, no one’s putting an asterisk on the Giants saying, ‘Well, they had a play-in game,’ right? No, they won the Super Bowl. And I think that’s what we need to do. I’ve been on teams that were 7-9 and won the NFC West in 2010. And I’ve been on teams that were 13-3 and lost in the AFC Championship game. So, let’s just play the games and let the field decide who should be in the playoffs, not a committee.”

In an 18-team league like the Big Ten, in most years, the four auto bids could be locked up by Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, and Oregon. The play-in games would open up those opportunities to more teams — and not just the fifth and sixth seeds.

With the play-in games being decided by conference standings, the Big Ten coaches believe the amount of movement and attention in November will lead to more excitement and opportunity than ever before.

“We talk to our players about no ceilings, accomplishing what you want to accomplish, take the lid off the jar, we call it ‘be delusional,'” explained Minnesota’s PJ Fleck. “I want them to think at Minnesota that we can go to the College Football Playoff.”

Fleck may want his team to be delusional, but he isn’t crazy. The Gophers finished the 2019 regular season 11-1. If there was a 12-team playoff that year, they may have done what Indiana did last year. 

The Hoosiers shocked everybody but themselves last year, but with playoff expansion and play-in games, the possibilities could become much more attainable than they are now.

Some may view that as a negative. Fleck and his fellow coaches are not part of that grouping.

“What I love about the expansion piece is it allows everybody in the conference to talk to their team about it,” Fleck said. “It can be absolutely realistic where you don’t need this magical 12-0 year. It’s still going to take a lot of wins, but maybe not just as magical as it used to be, but it is obtainable. My job is to always have ‘the standard’s the standard,’ but continue to raise the expectation. From the player’s perspective, to the administration’s perspective, to the state, the fans, our donors, our boosters. I love that. I don’t run from that piece. I never want my players to think that the head coach doesn’t think we can get there. That would be asinine if I ever did that.”

The play-in games open up the possibilities for every team in the Power Four conferences.

Play-in games in the Big XII and ACC between the top four teams for the two proposed auto bids each would not only double the number of teams in those conferences playing for a playoff bid, but it would add even more teams into the mix down the stretch.

Former Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel used to say that “September was for pretenders and November was for contenders.” That’s basically the motto of the play-in proposal.

“I think it’s awesome. Let’s go earn it on the field,” said Northwestern’s David Braun. “I mean, can you think of the excitement as we get into November and the teams that still have an opportunity to earn their way into the playoff? It would mean a lot for this program.”

Braun has seen the impact “earning it on the field” can have. Before he joined Northwestern in 2023, he had spent nearly a decade in the FCS level of college football. It’s a judgment-free zone in the FCS, as 24 teams make the playoffs and everything gets settled between the lines.

“We won national championships at North Dakota State in years that we didn’t win a conference title,” Braun said. “You look at Ohio State, wins a national title, doesn’t even play in the Big Ten Championship game. It really provides an opportunity, in my opinion, for the best team in the country to have an opportunity to win a national championship and not just be judged off of one game. It also benefits and celebrates teams that are playing their best football late in the season.”

Over 30 years ago when college football started moving towards a championship game between No. 1 vs. No. 2, the shifting began. Non-conference schedules became a shell of what they use to be.

In 1995, Ohio State’s non-conference schedule featured Boston College, Washington, Pitt, and Notre Dame — and only the Panthers weren’t ranked at the time.

But since then, every program that can afford to do so, schedules with the idea of maximizing their attractiveness to the judges.

Along the way, Purdue’s Barry Odom believes programs also lost sight of the student-athlete experience.

“You look at the opportunities that I experienced at UNLV, playing meaningful games down the stretch of November, and I saw the energy that created for the fans, the donors, the student athletes, and you’re still playing for the playoffs, and it’s in November, and how exciting is that for everybody that’s involved,” Odom said. “I think Commissioner Petitti’s got a tremendous outlook on what it needs to be and should be. I’m in full support of that. And I think you look at creatively providing opportunities for student athletes, how important that is for them to be able to capitalize on additional games and other opportunities to extend their playing season.”

Big-time college football is the only major sport in the world that has had to be dragged down the street, kicking and screaming about creating a postseason that doesn’t just rely on opinion.

The irony, however, is that with the advent of the 12-team playoff, programs have become more focused on creating a schedule that allows them to stay pretty enough to be viewed as playoff caliber, rather than scheduling tough enough to prove it.

There is no value in scheduling a loss, which is why non-conference scheduling has normalized the easy way out.

Auto bids and play-in games will invite better non-conference games, which theoretically will lead to a more entertaining September. October and November will then take care of themselves.

“I think it creates excitement to those games in November leading into those play-in games,” said Michigan State’s Jonathan Smith. “You think about it, you get into the first week of November, look at last year’s standings, I think there still would have been like 12 teams alive to earn opportunity at those things.”

College football traditionalists like to say that “every game matters,” but that’s never actually been the case. Every game matters until you lose, then maybe your games still matter and maybe they don’t.

If you think auto bids and play-in games will make losses stop hurting and matter less, just trying losing them.

With the implementation of auto bids and play-in games, the Big Ten coaches argue that the number of games that truly matter will increase greatly, making the regular season more important for more teams, more fans, more players, and selfishly more coaches.

“It would marry the regular season with the postseason,” Smith said.

The Big Ten wants to take the power away from the selection committee and put it in the hands of the teams themselves.

Out of the boardroom and onto the field.

Only in college football is this seen as controversial.

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