When Big Ten officially introduced Tony Petiti as a new commissioner about a month ago, he listed four urgent priorities regarding his role as one of the strongest people in college sports. The league needs to integrate USC and UCLA for the 2024-25 season, discover the new media rights deal for the expanded College Football Playoff, and focus on challenging name, and similarity. Finally, Petitti prioritized the official completion of the huge television contract, which was negotiated by its predecessor, Kevin Warren. This problem may seem like just a formality, but complications of the very famous deal appeared shortly after accepting the job. About three months before the start of the season and the start of these TV deals, Big Ten has not completed long-term contracts with fine print details. Instead, Petitti is doing important "horse trade" to resolve what the network calls "extraordinary problems" to end the NBC primetime agreement and maintain as much value as possible, according to multiple sources. "These agreements have not been made and are not as represented in terms of the NBC agreement and the fact that all members can participate in November games in primetime," said an industry source. Interviews with about a dozen sources in and around the Big Ten and college sports industry draw a picture of Petitti's predecessor running to navigate unresolved details. As a result, there are unhappy athletic directors who see money disappearing from his wife, frustrated television managers, and big name coaches who are disturbed by the lack of transparency in the details not transmitted to them. Kevin Warren took over as a Big Ten commissioner in January 2020 and struggled with the COVID-19 outbreak in just three years at the helm, With an agreement that changed the landscape, it helped USC and UCLA attend the conference and secured huge TV. The day of salary before returning to NFL as team chairman and CEO of Chicago Bears. When he accepted this job, he said he left Big Ten "in a better position"; this was financially correct as their schools predicted more income than any league during the deal. His work, which added USC and UCLA, which attended the conference after the 2023-24 season, was highly appreciated by the members and caused a financial blow to the television agreement. On campus, it's a little more complicated. Big Ten schools saw potential revenue disappear in the past few months from a contract announced in August that it was worth an average of about $ 1 billion a year during the 2029 football season. In total, more than $ 70 million flowed suddenly - about $ 5 million per school - and this left managers in the league to seek answers and call for financial accountability. Recently, schools have learned They will have to pay Fox about $ 40 million back because, according to sources, Warren handed over the Big Ten football title game to NBC in 2026 without full authority. All this does not control the rights of the inventory of this last deal, in fact, on the complex floor of the Big Ten conference - the majority of which are owned by Fox, the Big Ten Network controls. They will have to pay a total of $ 25 million for an agreement to repay Fox's lost 2020 football game inventory. This came after an agreement between Fox and the conference that could not collect revenue lost from the COVID-19 season. While Petitti competes to make sure he retains as much as possible from his original value, the tens of millions of dollars of the NBC primetime deal is constantly changing. Historically, in Big Ten, after the first weekend of November, schools did not have to play night games for numerous reasons such as health, recovery and campus logistics. These were known as "tolerances" in league circles, and previous television contracts were explaining them. Multiple sources told ESPN that a number of schools, including Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State, were taken back to play games played in late November under the new contract. This leaves Petitti to find out how some of the league's key teams will continue a hundreds of millions of dollars deal for the first matches without cooperation in part of the most important month of the regular season. Athletics departments and coaches around Big Ten say they are surprised that November night matches are part of the deal. According to sources, permission was not requested to play them before the deal, or they were not informed about the change before the deal. At the same time, NBC was not aware that these large brand schools had historical tolerances that were part of previous television arrangements and would resist being available until the first contract was signed this summer. "NBC was surprised and I was surprised," said Michigan athletics director Warde Manuel. "We hadn't argued to change the tolerances we agreed on years ago, and I hadn't met anyone in the league." However, in the sector, given the scope of the agreement, there was an expectation that all schools would play in prime time. "The mistake here is in the managers on campus," another industry source said. "How do presidents, chancellors and athletic directors not know this? All universities signed an agreement." While working on this topic, Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan State recently agreed to make concessions to make short-term sacrifices to help the league compensate for some loss of income from the NBC agreement. Penn State will play away against Michigan State, a match planned before Penn State's acceptance, in a short week on Black Friday. Ohio State will host Michigan State, the latest home game in Ohio State history on November 11, and this is seen as another concession to help the league skip this moment. "That's what it's going into right now," said another industry source for Petitti. "Tony is trying to save him, and what Penn State and Ohio State actually do is trying to minimize losses." Warren did not respond to requests for comment. "We are excited to start our Big Ten deal this fall," an NBC Sports spokesperson told ESPN. "We had a great relationship with Kevin Warren and Tony Petitti. We are sure that all unresolved issues are on the way to solving." The full understanding of Warren's agreement with NBC, CBS and Fox begins with a strange turn - Big Ten did not have technical rights. When Big Ten announced the long-term television deal with Fox and ESPN in 2016, the announcement did not contain all the details. One of the things that was not disclosed at the time or in recent months when discussing the new agreement was that Big Ten Network received all the programming rights of the league through an undisclosed date in 2016. The duration of this 2016 deal with Big Ten Network continues until the current deal announced at least in the 2029-30 season. This relationship was known to athletics directors, television managers on rival channels and officials in other leagues, even if it was not made public. Including the Sports Business Journal in April 2022, when several media companies reported that there were two Fox senior executives in the room when they met the league about television packages, it hit the public eye at various times. . This essentially meant that the latest round of Big Ten television deals was sub-license arrangements, where both Big Ten Network and Fox essentially controlled rights and worked to sub-license with Big Ten. This meant that most of the value of the deal was already sold. An industry source, "Conference Gotopnews.com