Exactly two weeks from today, former Major League Baseball Chief Operating Officer Tony Petitti will take the leadership role of the Big Ten Conference. He becomes the league’s seventh commissioner, replacing Kevin Warren, who has now become President and CEO of the Chicago Bears.
Warren was on hand for Pettiti to greet the media, for the first time, on Friday. College sports are all about football first and foremost, with general mainstream interest for men’s basketball one month of the year as well.
While Tony Petitti has plenty of bona fides in football and other sports (we’ll cover that here, later on), baseball is the best place to begin in highlighting what he brings to the table. His most recent gig was Deputy Commissioner of MLB, and the MLB Network is indeed his baby.
He was the creative driving force behind its inception, and at the time (2008), it marked the biggest launch of a single cable network in history.
Tony Petitti also played baseball, on the varsity level, when he attended Haverford College.
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At his very first press conference in his new role, staged on Friday, he discussed what did at his last job, and how that carries over to his new one.
“Working in a league office, you’re dealing with, in our case, 30 teams: 30 team owners, 30 baseball operations departments, 30 ticketing departments,” Petitti said at the league’s office/headquarters and conference center in Rosemont.
Very interestingly enough Big Ten HQ shares their building with a Fogo de Chao (see photo below).
“Your job is to be a resource for every one, while also bringing ideas of how they can work together in maybe ways that they weren’t before. So that communication process is very similar to this structure.”
Petitti arrives at a time when the heavy lifting has already been done. The Big Ten has already completed their tv/streaming rights deal, with multiple partners. It’s a contract that will make them the richest college conference in the nation.
Yes, more money than even the mighty SEC, as their rights deal is worth $7 billion.
College sports are more about money than ever, which means they are more about ratings/page views/eyeballs than ever. And baseball just does not move the needle when it comes to college athletics.
Especially so in the Big Ten, as college baseball is just dominated by warm weather teams from warm weather conferences.
Football is where it’s at, plain and simple. Not just for the Big Ten but for everybody.
Petitti, while working as an executive for ABC Sports, helped create the Bowl Championship Subdivision back in the early 1990s. He discussed the forthcoming College Football Playoff expansion.
“I was fortunate enough to be in the CFP meetings those past couple weeks really just to listen in as I make this transition.
“There’s just a tremendous amount of excitement about the expansion and what it’s gonna mean for the sport,” Petitti said.
“I think the one thing about the BCS that was really great, and I think that will continue with the expanded playoff, is just the ability to make the regular season still very important and fill that excitement.
“You want to think about it as two halves, postseason and regular season, and it really is one connected half. And the goal of a great postseason is to make the regular season better.
“I feel really confident that the number that’s been chosen will do exactly that.”
And about that $7 billion media deal…
“Obviously Kevin and team did a remarkable job, it’s an incredible platform with the partners at FOX, CBS and NBC going forward. But that’s gonna require great execution, so to say that work is done I think is unfair,” Petitti said.
“There’s a lot of work to do to make sure our partners are successful, that the members and the student-athletes are getting the benefit of those great media deals. I think expansion, also, I will say it’s really important to integrate USC and UCLA properly.
“So while they are gonna be members, there’s a ton of work that has to be done to make sure that we organize it properly, that student-athletes when they enter, the schedules make sense. So all of those things are very important.”
Paul M. Banks is the owner/manager of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He’s written for numerous publications, including the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune. He regularly appears on NTD News and WGN News Now. Follow the website on Twitter and Instagram.