Counterpoint: You’re a Good-Looking Genius, Tony Pettiti

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Please: at LEAST a 24-team College Football Playoff. But might we make a recommendation?

Dear Commissioner Pettiti,

Hi. MNWildcat here. Thanks for putting your thumb on the scale earlier this week to prevent SBNation from being sold to the Murdochs along with Vox. I know you’re too humble and good-looking a genius to take any public credit for it, but I know a Pettiti job when I see it.

And that’s why I want to tell you: don’t listen to the haters.

Sure, you looked bad when you tried to sell out stakes of the conference to private equity, an idea so craven and shitty that even USC and Michigan—Michigan!—told you to fuck off. But, visionary genius that you are, you persevered and decided that the new way to make money was by expanding the College Football Playoff to 24 teams.

And, Commissioner Pettiti, as a fan of a team that—at best—will be the 14th- or 15th-best team in college football in a pre-NIL landscape and might make it to seven wins a few times in the post-college football landscape, I say bring it on.

I personally salivate at the thought of getting—not having, as your detractors would say, but getting the privilege—to stay up until 1am watching Northwestern play a football game at Washington while knowing that there’s going to be an extra $82 million in the athletic department’s bank account that’s going to be used to get into an arms race with the Ohio States of the world that my school will never win. Sure, we’ll only see Purdue and Iowa twice every five years, but think about how I’ll be Scrooge McDucking it into the shallow end of a pool filled with the concept of gold coins.

I know you’ll speak at my funeral, Commissioner Pettiti, because I am the kind of consumer who gleefully eats up the visionary innovation you have brought to our conference.

Now, I realize that SOME people who will not be named and definitely not linked to will criticize this. They’ll remind you that, well…

We, the fans, are the consumers of your inventory. You might think that your customers are the media companies and their commercial advertiser partners.

But I say NAY! In fact, please sell more parts of the Big Ten to commercial advertisers! Have you ever seen a soccer game—I haven’t, obviously, soccer’s for those coastal types and also Indiana for some reason—featuring the Mexican team Leon?

That’s what I want you to aspire to, Tony. I want those Ultra 5K-Hi-Def cameras and microphones that B1G FOX is going to put around the field to capture every bead of sweat falling off Bret Bielema, every pleat in Kirk Ferentz’s khakis, every ping! of a coin falling out of your pocket up in the Super Top Secret Suite that you reside in, lest you accidentally see a consumer—don’t let them tell you we’re called “fans,” that’s only when you need to sell us something—at one of these inventory items—I mean, games.

I know that I, a Northwestern football consumer, cannot wait to lose 52-7 to some top seed in the College Football Playoff—or watch Iowa lose 24-6, what we call a “Ferentzian blowout”—but rest easy in the knowledge that at least we made The Dance. What I’ve always said, consumer that I am, is that I wish fewer inventory items meant something so that I can be on my couch for what really matters—the FOX B1G N00D Saturday Summer Slam Super-Show, featuring Dave Portnoy and Tucker Carlson, Football Talked Also. It’s stressful to consume college football inventory, and I certainly don’t want to be burdened by watching my certified product preference—Northwestern, to review—actually contesting any inventory with a fellow franchise in the product lineup.

So, when SOME people would say things like this

Tony, you do not understand that college football fans are a unique, bizarre, occasionally unhealthily obsessed bunch. You do not understand your job.

I say don’t worry about it, you good-looking business genius. You’re doing great, and I for one cannot wait to consume more inventory that means even less. It’ll allow me to do what I’m really concerned about, which is maintaining my subscriptions to as many different channels and streaming services as possible. THAT’S what college football is all about.

With love,

MNWildcat Subscriber 482947

PS: can I interest you in a media company? Lightly used, some blogs still remain to talk about Big Ten inventory for fellow consumers, will pivot to video for food.

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