9 October 2023
Big Ten commission Tony Petitti set up shop Monday morning in the Timberwolves/Lynx coaching room at Target Center.
Petiti opened the door on his temporary office to a few reporters, including the Pioneer Press, for a string of interviews during women’s and men’s basketball media days early this week.
He discussed name, image and likeness (NIL), conducting Big Ten events in the Twin Cities, and his relationship with Gophers Athletics Director Mark Coyle.
Here’s a condensed Q&A with Petitti, who was hired as commissioner in April.
The decision for the Big Ten to come to the Twin Cities for this event was made before your time. Why do you feel it’s important to be here in Minnesota?
“Minnesota is in the heart of Big Ten country, and I think it means a lot when you bring tournaments and championship games to different places within the conference. It’s really important to connect fans to give them the chance to not only follow the regular season, which they do, but also then they have an opportunity to watch championship-level, tournament-level events. This is the critical way of connecting people. I liked that as a strategy.
A few years ago, Minneapolis or U.S. Bank Stadium was mentioned as a possible venue for the Big Ten Football Championship Game. Obviously, it has been held in Indianapolis (since it started in 2011). With conference expansion, is Minneapolis still an option?
We’ve received a lot of interest from multiple places about where to play that football championship, and so I think we’re in the process now, just reviewing what we received.
Is Minneapolis one of those?
Correct, they are.
Gophers football coach P.J. Fleck came out two weeks ago and said, if the U doesn’t get name, image and likeness money, it is going to be a Triple-A ball club for somebody else. There’s a concern outside of the top-tier programs with deeper pockets about what happens to the middle class of college football. How do you look at making sure the conference is strong, top to bottom, when it comes to NIL?
There’s always history about certain programs and who’s stronger, who’s not. But I think the way I look at it is you want to make sure that the system is fair, that it promotes competitive balance. I think what we’ve got now is different than what NIL was intended to do. NIL was intended to allow student-athletes to monetize their name-image-and-likeness rights; it was not intended to be a way to raise money to inspire players to attend or transfer. I think that’s what, you know, P.J. is talking about. There’s sort of two different things going on.
What is the Big Ten pushing for on a federal level when it comes to NIL?
I think we’ve been pretty clear about believing in the student-athlete model first. I think we’ve been really clear that student-athletes should obviously 100 percent be able to pursue NIL rights, and we should encourage and help that. …
Part of the concern (and) where you’re seeing a lot of difficulty in having a system, it’s not just purely transactional.
We believe strongly that the student-athlete model is the right model, not an employee model. I think another big piece of what we’re looking for in Washington is we have a lot of states passing laws and doing different things, so to try to compete nationally, or even within a conference, when you’ve got different sets of rules across states is not sustainable. It does not make it easy to compete that way. We’re just concerned about … states getting involved in this. When we go down to Washington, having preemption of state law is really important. …
A lot of what you’re seeing happening with collectives is they’re not required to comply with Title IX. … I think that’s a big concern as well, making sure that those gains (with Title IX) are not given back.
What has your relationship with Mark Coyle been like?
Mark has been great early on. It’s really important to understand what members expect the conference to do as part of learning what the job is like. What does membership want you to do? What do you think you need to do better? What do you think? What do they think you’re doing well? Mark’s been someone I have 100 percent leaned on, from the very first days, to help provide that guidance. And he’s been … he’s been great. And he’s incredibly collaborative, and someone I can really rely on to help provide a good pulse of what’s going on out there. …
His experience (on the NCAA Division I men’s basketball committee) is also relevant for the CFP, like understanding how selection committees work and how you balance things. Because there’s a crossover into the College Football Playoffs, but as we go from four to 12 (teams), that selection process is going to be even more important. And so, you know, Mark and I talked about that.”
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