ATLANTA — Tony Petitti descended a small flight of stairs from a temporary stage to the turf field inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium late Monday night with a smile on his face and flecks of championship confetti dotting his vest adorned with the Big Ten Conference logo.
Not quite two years had passed since Petitti took the job as the Big Ten commissioner. At that point, the conference was already, by many measures, one of the two most influential in college sports, alongside the Southeastern Conference. But by one scoreboard, one conference was supremely ahead.
A Big Ten team had not won college football’s national championship in nine years, and only twice in the previous 21. The SEC, meanwhile, had claimed 13 of the last 17 national championships.
Petitti was smiling Monday perhaps because that SEC stranglehold on college football may at last be loosening. Deep in the heart of SEC country, Ohio State had just beaten Notre Dame, 34-23, to win the College Football Playoff’s national championship game, the second consecutive season that ended with a Big Ten team victorious, following Michigan last season.
“I think this is the greatest run in college football history, what Ohio State did, what happened last year (with Michigan) to be undefeated, both those two,” Petitti told NBC News. “I feel like this year it was a new format so you’ve got to win more games and who they had in front of them and the way they had to do it, it’s incredibly impressive.”
The sport’s power dynamic did not dramatically shift Monday night; the Big Ten and SEC continue to have the most money in the bank and power in the boardroom among all college conferences. Yet symbolically, this was also the second consecutive season that an SEC team had not advanced to the title game, the first time that had happened since the 2004-05 seasons. Half of the final four also came from the Big Ten for the second time since 2022.
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“I mean, it’s not an opinion, if you look at — I don’t know how many years it’s been — I guess since ‘06 or something like that, the SEC has had the upper hand, it’s reality,” said Kirk Herbstreit, the ESPN broadcaster who has called all 12 College Football Playoff national championship games.
“The fact that Michigan and Ohio State won back-to-back, I think it’s uncharted territory, this NIL, transfer portal era. So let’s see. I’m excited to see if they can keep it rolling next year. It’s been fun to see.
“We need five years and then we can be like, OK, now it’s a trend.”
Ohio State would not have even been in the playoff had the field not expanded this season from four to 12 teams, which allowed its two-loss résumé to still qualify. When Indiana, a Big Ten team, lost to Notre Dame in the playoff’s first round, the sport became locked in a discussion about whether the Hoosiers’ inclusion had come at the expense of a superior SEC team, such as Alabama, Ole Miss or South Carolina.
Then Ohio State won four straight games to win its first national title in a decade.
“I think the difference is that we finished the season the right way, and we grew,” said Ohio State coach Ryan Day, who had been heavily criticized for his team’s fourth consecutive loss to rival Michigan in late November. “We built, and we responded to tough times. Man, isn’t that what life is all about?”
Near the corner of the end zone painted in Ohio State’s scarlet and gray, Buckeyes receiver Emeka Egbuka said it did not matter to him that the Big Ten had prevailed, only that his team had won. It was an opinion that was not universally shared. Before kickoff, one Ohio State fan donning a wig dyed red and white and red-painted shoulder pads shook a hand-crafted sign over a railing just feet from the Ohio State sideline.
“Front row: $8000
Hotel $1000
SEC watching from home
PRICELESS”
Standing only a few yards away from Egbuka, Buckeyes lineman and NFL Hall of Fame inductee Orlando Pace said the Big Ten’s win mattered.
“I live and die with the Buckeyes, but for so many years they were talking about the SEC, how tough they were, how much more dominant they were over everybody, so the last two years to have a Big Ten team seeing confetti fall was awesome,” Pace said. “I think that says a lot about our conference, the toughness, everything that goes with it. So, extremely proud of this team.”
The Big Ten’s challenge will be staying a step ahead at a time when conference realignment — a chain reaction sparked by moves made by both the Big Ten and SEC — congressional legislation and NCAA rules changes have destabilized the structure of collegiate sports.
But backed by lucrative television contracts, the Big Ten, along with the SEC, remains a power broker in how that future will be shaped. In the 2022-23 fiscal year, the Big Ten raked in $879.9 million in revenue, while the SEC generated $852.6 million; the totals were each more than $100 million more than the next-closest conference. On average, Big Ten schools earned about $9 million more annually than their SEC counterparts.
Ohio State will have a chance to defend its title because players like star freshman receiver Jeremiah Smith, who caught a game-clinching 56-yard pass in the final minutes, will return.
Wearing a commemorative championship T-shirt over his pads, Smith was asked how he would top his debut college season.
“Um, try to win it next year,” Smith said. “I mean, not try — I mean, we gonna win it next year.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
