Tony Petitti’s arrival as Big Ten commissioner coincides with the emergence of the Caitlin Clark era, and the combination of the TV-branded executive with the conference’s biggest star should be interesting to watch.
Petitti, who replaced current Chicago Bears President Kevin Warren as the seventh Big Ten commissioner, mentioned the Iowa Hawkeyes star a couple of times Friday during his introductory news conference in Rosemont, sending a message the conference will be all-in on promoting women’s basketball.
“I think right now there are some great opportunities in college sports, the College Football Playoff being one,” Petitti said. “It’s going to expand and reimagine what the postseason is, (and) what just happened this past March in the women’s basketball tournament and Iowa was a huge part of that, and Caitlin Clark.
“That’s another huge opportunity. And when you see momentum someplace, as a leader your responsibility is to really double down and focus on that because there’s a great opportunity in the women’s basketball game to grow.”
Clark and the Hawkeyes helped set viewership records during the NCAA Tournament, including the championship game loss to LSU. Clark, the 6-foot junior point guard who won the Wooden Award and the Naismith Trophy while being named Associated Press Player of the Year, has become as recognized as the most popular men’s college basketball players. Her star has risen quickly, and it has taken the sport of women’s basketball along for the ride.
What’s best is Clark has two more years of eligibility and a chance to help bring women’s basketball to even greater heights. That’s where Petitti comes in.
The two most prominent Big Ten sports have been football and men’s basketball. That won’t ever change. But the SEC has been considered the most powerful football conference for years, and the Big Ten has not produced a men’s basketball champion since Michigan State in 2000. They had eight teams invited to the men’s tournament in March, and only Michigan State made it to the Sweet 16 — and lost.
The Iowa women’s team made more noise in March than any men’s team and figures to be in the national spotlight again in 2023-24.
Clark scored 41 points in the Elite Eight and semifinal games and set tournament records in points (191) assists (60) assists and 3-pointers (32). Her Instagram account (@caitlinclark22) has more than 692,000 followers, and the school recently put a pause on season ticket sales for women’s games at Carver-Hawkeye Arena because of overwhelming demand.
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Clark is a phenomenon, and Petitti has been paying close attention. He noted during his question-and-answer session Friday that Clark’s popularity has been helped by her use of social media.
“In this generation, students have a powerful voice,” he said. “I was really struck Caitlin Clark posted something about who she thought was going to win the Masters, and you’re talking about millions of impressions.
“That’s changing very rapidly. Fans want to hear directly from athletes, whether it’s student-athletes or professionals. That’s a big part of the next generation. It’s really incumbent upon all of us that we allow younger people to engage where they want to and not be so rigid.”
Petitti, 62, who engineered the startup of MLB Network Baseball and helped invent the Bowl Championship Series — the first college football playoff system — takes the reins of the richest and most prominent conference in the nation. He inherits a new TV football deal with CBS, Fox and NBC that brings $1 billion per year to the conference and also includes prime-time Saturday night games on NBC. Petitti also benefits from conference expansion in 2024, when Pac-12 powers USC and UCLA join.
Petitti said he spent the last couple of weeks “listening in” at the CFP meetings on the plan to expand to 12 teams in 2024.
“The goal of a great postseason is to make the regular season better,” he said. “I feel really confident the number that’s been chosen will do exactly that.”
Petitti gave no specifics on what changes he has in mind for the the Big Ten. But as a creator of the BCS and a baseball innovator at MLB Network, he’s likely to be proactive in trying to grow the conference through digital platforms, whatever they might be in the coming years.
“The content, the games are what matters, and the platform is secondary,” Petitti said. “If you have something that’s great, people will find it. We’re in the process of that change.”
No one could have known a decade ago that things like NIL, TikTok or virtual free agency through transfer portals would all be part of college sports in the 2020s. Petitti said the key was making sure the content — games and otherwise — generated by student-athletes is on the platforms where young people congregate.
“It’s really clear, young people want to share and they want to collaborate and they want to have a conversation,” he said. “We have to find the right sweet spot, working with our partners, to make sure that conversation is happening around every sport we play, every championship we have.”
The Big Ten should always be innovators of the college sports scene. The 3-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust era is long gone.
Maybe Petitti can make it even bigger and better, with a little help from Clark.