Q&A: Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti on NIL, sports betting and more

First-year Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti spent most of Monday morning backstage, greeting coaches before they took the stage for Big Ten women's basketball media day at Target Center.

Petitti, who replaced Kevin Warren as the conference's commissioner in April, is already building a sense of where leadership within his conference stands on major issues in college athletics, including NIL, gambling, expansion and more.

In a Q&A with the Star Tribune on Monday, the former Major League Baseball chief operating officer shared his thoughts on the Big Ten's direction in some critical areas.

Not surprisingly, Big Ten scheduling for the future has been one of the hottest topics discussed between Petitti and his coaches, as the Big Ten football schedule through 2028 was announced last week. With UCLA, USC, Oregon and Washington added in 2024-25, will the Big Ten stick to the current 20-game league men's basketball schedule?

"Right now that's the plan," Petitti said. "But scheduling is a living thing where it's changing all of the time."

Here's the rest of the interview, edited for length:

Q: The Big Ten went from 18 to 20 men's basketball league games in 2018-19, so how strongly are you looking at expanding it again?

A: Your job in a conference office is to No. 1, get feedback from your coaches and our athletic directors to figure out what's working and if we did things different, what would it look like. So that's just ongoing. There's a history of expanding conference games, so we'll see. We're looking at all of that. That's where the feedback from coaches is critically important. They're the ones that go out there and do it."

Q: What's the impact of Iowa superstar guard Caitlin Clark on the Big Ten?

A: I think there's just a tremendous excitement around women's basketball overall, especially in the Big 10. Obviously, Caitlin gets a lot of attention. Iowa's program does as well. We have a lot of great players across all of our programs. Just listening to some of the coaches, it elevates everybody. It increases the exposure for everybody.

Q: Gophers football coach P.J. Fleck talked about the challenges of recruiting during the NIL era. What's your response to reports of NIL in recruiting?

A: [Athletes] having opportunities to help brands and products and use their name, image and likeness to support those brands, I think that's great. We should support and celebrate that, but the other piece of it is when there's money in the system that's more transactional. That's where I think the problems have come, right?

In terms of just money being used to sort of now touching recruiting and touching the transfer portal, it's not how the system is supposed to be. It's not what NIL was intended to do.

Q: How do you avoid what happened with the gambling scandal that allegedly involved Iowa athletes?

A: I think No. 1, the first obligation is education. Providing the information for student-athletes, so they obviously understand what they can and cannot do and what the results of that are and what the penalties are for making a mistake. I think that's the first step.

And then we've moved to availability reporting in football on the day of the game. We'll most likely do that for basketball but also probably for some additional sports that also have a lot of activity. And that's done to protect the student-athletes, to make the information around injuries public so that there's not a perception that the information is valuable.

Q: What type of relationship will the Big Ten have with betting entities?

A: We've stayed clear of that. Right now that's the right thing to do. These are young people. Professional sports are just different in terms of what it can do with sponsorship and other things from where the college game is now.

Q: What does it mean to have the Big Ten tournament in the Twin Cities for the second straight year?

A: I think one of the things is that it goes back to probably my experience at MLB that bringing big events to places really matters. Connecting Minneapolis here in the heart of Big Ten country, and to bring the tournaments here to have that exposure, it's just really important. It helps have a lasting impact.

Q: Would the Big Ten consider having the football championships in Minneapolis?

A: I would look more generally about that. Fortunately, we've got a lot of interest in our football championship. I'm expecting a lot of interest in the men's and women's basketball tournaments. It's just evaluating that over time in terms of what is the right path to move these events.