New Big 12 commissioner gives his vision of the conference

Growth. That sums up new Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark’s first press conference in addressing reporters at Media Days July 12.

Yormark, who is finishing his final weeks as the co-CEO of Roc Nation, was asked every question pertaining to college sports, including Name, Image and Likeness, conference expansion, college football playoffs and getting a new contract with television partners for the conference.

“I’m confident in my background and that it’s suited for this work,” he said. “I’ll carry out the vision of our member institutions. We must use our platform to draw positive change around us.”

Yormark was more specific on his background in marketing and branding and how it will help the conference. He wants to use social media in better ways, especially when it comes to the conference’s student-athletes. He wants people to know the student-athletes beyond their uniforms and statistics.

“I think we can have special moments. My goal is to take the baton and move it forward,” he said. “I think there’s opportunities as I learn more about the brand to become more national, to make it hipper, cooler, add youth culture. I think we have a great opportunity to do that. In Nascar we made it a national phenomenon. My goal is to do something similar here.”

When it came to NIL and college football playoffs, he noted he was leaning heavily on the men who’ve been there before: outgoing Commissioner Bob Bowlsby and former College Football Playoffs Chairman Bill Hancock. Bowlsby was part of the talks of expanding the playoffs in summer 2021, while Hancock was there from the beginning.

He used the word “guardrails” for describing what he’d like to see with NIL.

“I’m an advocate of NIL,” he said. “At Roc Nation we’ve been engaged with NIL. I haven’t spoken to many of our stakeholders. We need guardrails and we need to see what it looks like going forward. I’m suited for NIL.”

As for the partnerships with ESPN and Fox Sports, which televises Big 12 games, Yormark said he believes the conference has sports and contests people want to see and television networks want to broadcast.

“I’m bullish on the Big 12,” he said. “What we look like today could be very different. We have three years with current members. I look forward at the right time to engaging with them, how they glamorize and promote, how to market our great conference.”

Though Yormark, who also worked in Nascar and has spent time in Dallas, won’t officially start his job with the Big 12 until Aug. 1, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been contacted about adding teams to the conference, he said. He noted that USC and UCLA leaving the Pac 12 for the Big 10 “threw me into it quicker than I thought. It defines our path going forward.”

“We’re exploring all options for expansion,” he added. “We’re vetting through all that. We’re receiving lots of calls. We’re exploring those levels of interest. Nothing is imminent.”

The conference also is preparing for the departures of Oklahoma and Texas, the founding members, and Yormark said he will do what’s best for the conference when it comes to when the two will be allowed to leave without paying the penalty. Right now their grant of rights end in at the end of the 2024-25 school year, though reports from the Austin media have stated the Longhorns want to play in the SEC beginning in 2024-25.

“Folks from Oklahoma and Texas have been very gracious to me,” Yormark said. “They were part of the process of me getting hired. I appreciate them. I don’t start till Aug. 1. I look forward to (meeting with them). I look for win-win scenario. Whatever happens is in the best interest of conference.”

Yormark looks forward to his new job, including visiting all 14 members in the first few weeks he begins working and giving reports on those conversations to the board of directors. He said he thought he would be an athletic director for a university, not a conference commissioner. He asked the conference head football coaches for their cell numbers as he met them.

“I always had a vision to be in college sports,” he said. “I was enamored with the space when I was at the Barclays Center. As it relates to football coaches, it was for me to introduce myself. I had nice dialogue with the coaches and that I’m looking forward to seeing them this week.”

He noted that he and the board of directors have plenty of common ground and have the same goals for the conference.

“We are a very unified group,” he said. “(There is) alignment of the board of directors and members have going forward. I feel very confident our conference is in the best position it’s ever been before. I don’t pay much attention to anything else but us. I think there’s incredible upside with the Big 12.”

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