Reserving the option to change his mind, Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti is not seeking to add to his 18-team conference.
Petitti said at Big Ten Media Days in Indianapolis on Tuesday that he remains “focused on the 18 for now,” echoing the sentiment shared by SEC commissioner Greg Sankey about his conference earlier this month.
“I think we’re really comfortable with where we are. We’ve got to get this conference right, and that’s where our focus is,” Petitti said.
Four teams are making their Big Ten debut this season following a mass exodus from the Pac-12 that began with USC and UCLA and multiplied to include Oregon and Washington.
Because the integration of West Coast teams complicated scheduling across sports, Petitti said he’s not focused on any other prospective members, including any programs that might have interest in jumping from the Atlantic Coast Conference and taking the Big Ten to the Big Twenty.
A key point from an educational and health perspective for the Big Ten was finding ways to restrict travel, particularly back-to-back road games. The conference focused on blocking cross-country travel in consecutive weeks in its first year of scheduling matchups such as Maryland and at Oregon (Nov. 9), which is about 2,820 miles by car or a long flight.
“I really believe scheduling is something that has to be constantly evaluated by sport,” Petitti said. “And I anticipate that we’ll get a lot more right in these next couple of years, the way we’ve formatted and scheduled. But it’s our job to listen to student-athletes, to listen to coaches, to make sure that we’re adjusting and making the change we need.”
Not every team can avoid the long travel legs, and the disparity between the most miles to travel this college football season and least is vast in the Big Ten.
UCLA’s schedule results in more miles of travel — 22,000 — than any other Big Ten football team. The four West Coast teams each will travel more than 12,500 miles.
Indiana will host UCLA and travel a league-low 4,900 miles this season. Purdue is 17th in planned travel miles at about 5,100 and Michigan is at 5,200.
