The Big Ten Isn't Buying Fans Not Wanting 24-Team College Football Playoff

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The Big Ten Conference has been pushing for another expansion to the College Football Playoff, much to the chagrin of fans. Yet despite all of the public backlash against the decision, the conference is gleefully pushing forward with the idea.

During Tuesday's Big Ten Media Days, Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti dismissed reports that online polls have fans overwhelmingly supporting keeping the field at 12 teams. He expressed confidence that fans will fill the stadiums for all playoff games, regardless of what the polls show.

“I know there’s things out there we get, ‘Oh, this fan poll said this, this poll said that.’ I’m really confident that we’ll fill our stadiums and we’ll have really large audiences for these games,” Petitti said.

Re: 24-team CFP backlash, Petitti says, "I know there's things out there, we get 'Oh, this fan poll said this, this poll said that.' I'm really confident that we'll fill our stadiums and we'll have really large audiences for these games."

— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) July 28, 2026

Backlash

As you can probably guess, college football fans were even angrier that Petitti is so openly showing such contempt for the opinions of fans. Some believe he should be fired while others believe that the only solution is to stop going to games.

"He should be fired. 24 turns it into a participation trophy. Any school that doesn't make a 24 team playoff should fire the coaches and AD every time," one user remarked.

"Translation: 'we don’t care what the fans want, we’re driven solely by money and will expand no matter what,'" wrote another.

"'Fans will complain but still come.' Basically saying fan opinions don’t matter unless we start spending less money. Which goes for everything," a third wrote.

"He’s terrible for the sport. Media has to help pushback."

"Oh my god this guy is such a loser. 'Who cares what the fans and consumers want, we’ll do it anyway' these [expletive] literally don’t care about anything but the money going into their pockets."

The Big Ten have made it clear that they're going to follow the money. It's increasingly looking like the only way to stop the Big Ten and other conferences from diluting the sport is to stop feeding into it.

That might not be possible in this day and age though.

This story was originally published by The Spun on Jul 29, 2026, where it first appeared in the College Football section. Add The Spun as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

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