LAS VEGAS — Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark insists everyone misinterpreted his much-repeated line two years ago, when at these same Big 12 Media Days he said his conference was “open for business.”
Everyone listening took that comment as the league’s openness to conference expansion. The Pac-12 had just seen USC and UCLA defect, and it was no secret the Big 12 hoped to pick off some pieces. A little more than a year later, the Pac-12 disintegrated as the Big 12 added four of its schools.
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“When I said we’re open for business, I didn’t mean expansion. What the hell would I know about expansion?” Yormark told The Athletic on Tuesday inside Allegiant Stadium. “I meant we’re going to explore and kick the tires on as many things as possible to create value.”
It was impossible not to think about the Pac-12 at this year’s Big 12 gathering. Four new schools — a quarter of the league’s new 16-team construction — came from the Pac-12. The site of Big 12 media days is Las Vegas, same as last year’s Pac-12 media day, which featured Colorado athletic director Rick George scurrying out and avoiding the media right before Colorado switched leagues (with help from a reported $2.5 million signing bonus from the Big 12 that Yormark did not confirm or deny Tuesday: “Ultimately, one got us four.”)
Although Oregon and Washington jumping to the Big Ten started the final domino effect, the Big 12’s not-so-secret yearlong recruitment of Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah got the attention, and put the spotlight on its commissioner, as well as some blame from fans. A year later, Yormark sees it simply as the right business decision at the right time. He got a TV deal done before the Pac-12, and that proved to be the difference. Eat or be eaten.
“If people felt (the Pac-12 collapse) was because of me or not, to me that’s all noise,” Yormark said. “I came here with a job, and that was to create stability for the Big 12 and position us in a way we could thrive moving forward, and that’s exactly what I did. They had other goals in mind, the Pac-12, right or wrong. We knew exactly where we wanted to go, we were like-minded as a group, and we executed and they didn’t. That’s the bottom line.
“It had nothing to do with me or anything else other than, we executed our plan and they did not.”
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College sports has been a cutthroat business for coaches and players for years. Only now have administrators begun to treat it as such. Those who haven’t realized it quickly enough have been left behind, including the century-old league that long carried the banner for West Coast college football.
There’s no time for sentimentality when the Big Ten and SEC have vaulted ahead in revenue by hundreds of millions of dollars ($30-40 million per school), or when the House v. NCAA settlement has opened the door for schools to finally pay players directly.
Suddenly, some of Yormark’s off-the-wall ideas that were met with eye rolls two years ago are being discussed more widely. Ads on the field. Jersey sponsorship patches. Social media partnerships. Private equity. Renaming the conference after a sponsor. This is the world Yormark came from while with NASCAR, the NBA and Roc Nation. Instead of changing his style to fit college sports, college sports has changed to look more like him.
“Early on, it was, ‘Where’s this guy coming from?’” Yormark said. “I’m not saying I had more foresight than anyone, but two years later, everyone’s talking about it.”
Yormark doesn’t have carte blanche. He reports to the Big 12 presidents, who have turned down plenty of ideas. But the schools are happy they’re talking about these things.
“Brett knows he’s not going to win every battle,” Kansas State athletic director Gene Taylor said. “He knows his job is to bring (ideas) forward, and if we don’t want to do them, it’s going to get voted down. But he welcomes the conversation.”
Count Taylor in the group that believes the Big 12 should take on a private equity or private capital injection, which would provide an additional tens of millions of dollars per school in an effort to help Big 12 schools keep up with the Big Ten and SEC financially in the short term. Others in the league aren’t as sure. The question is the long term when the bill comes due, or whether schools will have to extend their grant of rights to benefit from the injection. Private equity isn’t a charity and is ruthless in its own way. Yormark said the league’s decision on that should come in the coming months.
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A decision on renaming the conference with a sponsor (“Allstate 12” being the leading contender) appears less imminent. There is support within the league, but leaders don’t want to cheapen the brand of their conference in exchange for some more millions. Is every single piece of college sports for sale? Should it be? And why keep the ‘12’ when the league is now at 16?
“We’ll see what happens in the future, but if we did a naming rights partner, we would have to do the due diligence on 12,” Yormark said. “We’d have to say we’re not going to change this thing for a while. We did that before and our board said let’s stick with ’12’ and build equity behind it, and we have. If we are going to change a part of the name, we probably need to go back into the lab and make sure that change from top to bottom is the right one.”
College sports have been completely reshaped over the last few years. Conferences make no geographic or numeric sense. Fans express frustration and exasperation, though they continue to fill stadiums. It’s no one person’s fault, but the loss of the Pac-12 remains a seismic change, with lingering feelings that may never go away.
“I think at the end of the day, when the L.A. schools left, as much as we tried to put together the best opportunity, that was a lot of headwind,” said Utah athletic director Mark Harlan, who chaired the Pac-12 AD committee. “That probably was the actual day (the Pac-12 began to crumble).”
Of course, there’s always the possibility of more conference realignment as soon as this summer. Clemson and Florida State have sued the ACC over disagreements related to its grant of rights. Yormark hasn’t been shy about the potential of basketball, saying again this week that the Big 12 is exploring selling football and basketball as separate TV deals in 2030. The possibility of adding Gonzaga hasn’t come together. UConn, the last non-Notre Dame football independent standing, has won consecutive men’s basketball national titles, but feelings within the league on the Huskies remain mixed.
Yormark hasn’t touched that realignment topic publicly since his comment two years ago, saying he’s only focused on the 16. But he’s prepared for more change. So while discussing the various sponsorship and revenue possibilities for the league, he went back to the well.
“I guess you could say we’re still open for business,” he said.
Take that however you’d like.
(Photo: Candice Ward / USA Today)
