The bizarre and brazen story of the Big Ten trying to financially fleece itself
Indiana football coach Curt Cignetti greets fans at Beaver Stadium
After the Hoosiers dramatic road win against Penn State, IU coach Curt Cignetti exits the stadium to a line of fans waiting to congratulate him.
I don’t have the time or bandwidth to deal with the internal machinations of the Big Ten’s financial fleecing of itself. So let’s begin with the obvious.
Is Tony Petitti trying to kill the Big Ten all by himself?
Just when you think it couldn’t get worse than the last dolt of a conference commissioner asking players to run two seasons in nine months during a global pandemic, who ruined the Big Ten’s reputation with something called the Alliance before bolting for the NFL, Petitti has decided to hang his tenure as Big Ten commissioner on allowing the Wolf through the door.
The Wolf of private equity.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you financial stupidity: the Big Ten, the richest and most financially secure conference of all — by a wide margin — desperately trying to jump in bed with private equity in exchange for a piece of each school’s valuable, and ever-increasing, media rights.
And by jump in bed, I mean sell its soul.
Because once those private equity sharks, whose entire reason for being is — how can I say this? — making money above all else, are allowed one foot in the door, the Big Ten will cease to exist as we know it. One foot becomes one more favor, and then another, and the next thing you know, the sharks are swimming in what was once an oasis.
And for what? To win games?
Look, if the 16 Big Ten athletic departments who receive full shares of media rights money can’t exist on a projected $75 million in fiscal 2025 (increasing every year of the deal that ends in 2030), there are more than 100 FBS…
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