Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti wants to double the College Football Playoff to 24 teams — and he'll kill his own conference's championship game to do it, a move that would pour even more television revenue into university sports empires that already operate as billion-dollar enterprises while students drown in debt.

The stakes are straightforward: more playoff games mean more broadcast money, more ticket sales, more of everything that has turned college athletics into a corporate behemoth detached from the academic mission these institutions pretend to serve. Petitti conceded Tuesday at Big Ten football media days in Chicago that a 24-team playoff would mean the end of the Big Ten championship game, which has been held annually in Indianapolis since 2011.

"Yeah, I think it's pretty much we won't be playing a championship game if we go to 24," Petitti said, according to the Associated Press.

The trade-off tells you everything. A conference title game — once the crown jewel of the regular season — is now just a line item to be sacrificed on the altar of expanded postseason cash. Southern California coach Lincoln Riley framed it plainly: the model would become more like the NFL, where "people simply pay more attention to the national championship than anything else." Riley acknowledged that conference championship games are "huge revenue drivers" but said he has "a hard time believing that couldn't be recouped" through additional playoff games.

Petitti claims the 24-team format would make more late-season games meaningful, arguing teams ranked between 16 and 24 would be "just trying to make sure they're in" while others fight for seeding. "Every game is going to matter because your seeding is always going to be determined by somebody else," Petitti said.

The ACC, Big 12, and Notre Dame have lined up behind the plan, the AP reported, while the SEC remains the lone holdout. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey cited the risk to conference championship games as a drawback, though some of his own coaches — including Georgia's Kirby Smart and Tennessee's Josh Heupel — have broken ranks to express intrigue, Sports Illustrated reported.

Big Ten coaches, meanwhile, are unanimous. "When you get a room of 50 coaches or whatever we have in this conference together, it's hard to get everybody to be unanimous on something," Riley said. "This is something our room has been unanimous on."

The machinery is already in motion. Sources familiar with the process told Sports Illustrated that revenue projections for a 24-team model will be presented at the CFP management committee meeting in August, with a possible vote as soon as September. The Big Ten has also withdrawn its push for a set number of automatic playoff bids — a concession to build consensus.

Sports Illustrated framed the expansion as Petitti's personal winning streak while the Big Ten "takes over the sport." The AP presented it as a straightforward policy debate between conferences. Neither paused to ask what any of this has to do with the students whose tuition and federal loans subsidize the infrastructure these programs depend on — or why universities that can't agree on a core curriculum can unanimously back a playoff format worth billions more for an enterprise already swimming in cash.

Under the current 12-team format, teams already scrape in on the margin. The Quincy Patriot Ledger noted that Miami made last year's field with "the final at-large bid" after losing two of three late in the season. Now Petitti wants to double the field — rewarding mediocrity, diluting the regular season, and manufacturing more inventory for television partners.

The question isn't whether 24 teams makes for better football. It's who collects when the check clears — and who's left paying for stadiums they'll never sit in.