Jul 10, 2024
Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark speaks at 2023 Big 12 Football Media Days. (File Photo by Kevin Kinder/BlueGoldNews.com)
MORGANTOWN — Two years ago, Brett Yormark made his first appearance as commissioner of the Big 12 Conference at Football Media Day. Even though he had yet to officially assume the office, he knew had been chosen to lead the conference into a new era … not just of football, not of basketball, but of college athletics.
He made a proclamation that day, saying “we’re open for business.”
And it’s been nothing but business at Mach 3 speed ever since.
Think about it. The two years that have passed and what has transpired in college sports and the Big 12 … NIL, expansion, marketing, branding. Oklahoma and Texas are no longer in the Big 12, but Yormark brushes that aside saying “I think it’s safe to say we’re more relevant now than ever before.”
It was goodbye Oklahoma, so long Texas …. Hello America.
“We are truly a national conference, in 10 states, four time zones. And all eyes are now on the Big 12 for all the right reasons,” he said.
As for the doubters, he believes they were just flat-out wrong.
“We solidified ourselves as one of the top three conferences,” he said, calling the Big 12 the deepest conference in America.”
Once he started, things just kept happening.
“Listen, we’re moving at a great speed. When I got here, people warned me prematurely that things in collegiate athletics don’t move that fast. I can assure you, working with our ADs and our board, at least in the Big 12, that hasn’t been the case,” he said.
“If you think about what we’ve been able to accomplish over the last 24 months, it’s been incredible, and I tip my cap to our ADs and our board for wanting to be positively disruptive, to wanting to break boundaries, create new partnerships that could create value for the conference both short and long term.
“We’re moving at a great pace right now. Excited about all the things that are in front of us. And as I said earlier, we can’t pause. We’ve got to continue to be bold and aggressive but thoughtful at the same time.”
The key, he stressed, was expansion into the four corners.
In West Virginia, that may sound absurd. I can’t really think of too many times anyone ever asked how Utah did last night or who Arizona played this week. And before Deion Sanders became coach at Colorado, when you heard the word Buffalo around here you thought more of a city or a plate of wings than the Colorado mascot.
But set his sight on expanding west, something that became a prophetic decision with the fall of the Pac-12.
“I’ve been saying it for a year now, but the four corners were the A scenario for us when we thought about realignment,” he said. “Big brands, great markets, engaged fan bases, both academic and athletic excellence.
“We got deeper and better in football, we got deeper and better in basketball, and we got deeper and better in Olympic sports. So it’s been a win for this conference.”
He has been consumed with putting it all together, using creative thinking, hoping to put a great product on the field but more concerned with the business aspect of taking the business of the Big 12.
“I wake up every morning, I think about one thing, the Big 12 being the best version of itself. Everything else doesn’t really matter. And if we take care of business, we’re going to be just fine, and I’m a firm believer in that,” he said.
We live in a different world than we did when West Virginia was settled comfortably in the Big East.
You have USC and UCLA in the Big Ten, Stanford and Cal in the ACC.
It is an internet world, a streaming world, a world where geography no longer matters.
Sports are no longer games; they are a business. You brand, you market, you cater to the young and hope the oldsters can follow along. It would not be surprising to find that more logo gear is sold than underwear. Logoed baseball caps are made to be worn backward, and you spend far more on sports footwear than you do on dress shoes.
Somehow, Yormark has found a way to expand Mexico into the Big 12 plans and if he could find a way to draw a crowd for it, he’d set up a football game on the moon.
Yormark understands the product on the field matters, but the way to make it matter most is through parity, and he says that the Big 12 football conference is the most competitive in the land.
“I think there’s a lot of parity,” he said. “We’ve got 16 great coaches. We’ve got a lot of star power. When you think about the quarterbacks, you think about the running backs, many of our programs have been building over the last couple of years. So I think it’s only natural and appropriate for us to think that way right now.
“We were a very deep conference last year, but we got deeper now with the four corner schools. So, I’m expecting great things from our schools this year. I think last year we underperformed a little bit, candidly. I don’t expect that to be the case this year.
“Every week will matter, and as I said earlier, in November we’ll brand the month as a race to a championship because I think it’s going to be tight this year and it will take until towards the end of the season for us to determine who will show up at AT&T Stadium for that championship game.”
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