As gas prices spike and the war in Iran continues unabated, a seemingly silly verbal pissing match has engulfed the sports media business over the fate of the phenomenally lucrative—if slightly controversial—and ever-evolving 12-team College Football Playoff. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey catalyzed the feud months ago when he declined to support a push to expand the field to 24 teams. About a week and a half ago, Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti sat with reporters at his conference’s spring meeting in Southern California and used the forum to advocate for that expansion. Petitti said that his conference schools have had “zero conversation” about expanding the CFP to 16 teams—a thinly veiled dig at Sankey, who supports the smaller expansion plan. Sankey followed up a week ago by noting that the Big Ten actually pushed for a 16-team tournament last year. “Positions seem to change a lot,” he said.

This is hardly the stuff of diss tracks, but these comments appeared to give voice to the tensions between the two most powerful officials in college sports. They also coincided with whispers of discord between the two men on consequential issues over the past several months—not only CFP expansion, but also the role of private equity in collegiate athletics. Moreover, the apparent dispute was taking place following several years of absolute anarchy in college sports: the profusion of N.I.L. money and gambling apps, exorbitant coach comps, and a near-total reconstruction of our notion of student-athletes. How can college sports survive this chaos if its two largest entities can’t work together?

Sure, I would love to dish about the personality conflicts between the two. But according to nearly a dozen sports executives who have dealt with both guys, the tensions are based on corporate rather than personal disagreements. After all, Sankey and Petitti represent constituencies that are pursuing different agendas. “Look, there’s definitely a rivalry there, but they agree on a lot,” one media executive told me, citing a common desire for rules governing N.I.L. and the transfer portal. Meanwhile, according to another executive, “The fact is that Tony has a much more collegial set of schools that want to work together. Greg has a different management issue, so he just takes things slower and wants to get all of his boxes checked. Tony just goes much faster.”

The tensions—or “philosophical differences,” as a couple of people called them—extend beyond Petitti and Sankey to their media partners. ESPN, which holds not only SEC rights but also the CFP games, is perfectly content with the status quo, and would support Sankey’s recommendation to expand to 16 teams. In the network’s view, an expanded playoff with 24 teams has the potential to devalue both regular-season games and the CFP itself, which has been marred by many early-round blowouts—a trend that would likely continue if the field expanded. By adding potentially noncompetitive early-round CFP games that will run into NFL windows, too… quelle horreur!

Fox, a Big Ten rights-holder, wants to see the CFP expanded all the way to 24 teams, just like Petitti. The network believes the regular season has already been devalued, particularly early in the season, when bigger teams typically schedule cupcakes. (Week 0 sounds more like a light beer than an actual scheduling event.) Two of Ohio State’s first three games this season are against Ball State and Kent State—cupcakes that sandwich a Week 2 rematch with Arch Manning’s Texas.

Other examples abound: Fox’s featured game on September 19 is Kent State at Ohio State—a game that Ohio State will be favored to win by more than five touchdowns. “In some ways, it feels like Tony and Greg are just the proxies for the real war between Fox and ESPN,” one college sports veteran said.

On PGA chaos: “PGA of America president terms are only two years, so Don Rea was on his way out anyway. For all the golf podcasts out there, Rea was a content gold mine. His early pressers last year at the PGA Championship were hilarious. They obviously had tried to media-train him, and he awkwardly picked up about 15 percent of it and applied that knowledge haphazardly.” —A sports business executive

On Apple and F1: “I have to believe that 99.9 percent of all preexisting F1 fans are infuriated at what F1 has become on Apple TV. (Myself included!) During the first three races this year, the screen was blue unless you had OLED televisions. My QLED from a couple years ago did not show the colors accurately—I don’t have the same issue on any other show. When it was around, F1 TV was an amazing deal, and I desperately miss it. Now, if you want to watch Sky Sports commentary outside the races, you can do it live or never again. The replay is gone. I’d merrily go back to paying $89/annum if it meant going back to what existed before.” —A Varsity subscriber

On the NBA and NHL sweeps: “How many ad sales dollars do you think ESPN lost with two sweeps: Avs versus Golden Knights and Cavs versus Knicks?” —A sports media veteran

On The Varsity’s drink of choice: “Varsity readers don’t seem to defend sancerre nearly enough. I bet it’s served at Camden Yards. And it’s great when you’ve sat in your backyard, toes in the grass on a nice summer evening, secretly sipping a nice cool glass. Or maybe just straight out of the bottle.” —A media industry professional who knows a good vintage when she sees it

Have a great weekend. See you all on Monday.

John