A year ago, the Big 12 was pushed to the brink by the defections of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC. The remaining eight schools were searching for stability. The Pac-12 could have come in and finished the place off with a few tactical expansion moves.
The future was as terrifying as it was uncertain.
Yet the league survived.
No one was poached. The Pac-12 didn’t call. Anger at the Longhorns and Sooners seemed to galvanize the programs left behind. With no other options, everyone pushed forward together, adding four promising schools (BYU, UCF, Cincinnati and Houston) and stretching its boundaries from the Rocky Mountains to Disney World.
No, the Big 12 is not the big-money Big Ten or SEC. It isn’t staring at extinction either, though.
Now it is the Pac-12 reeling from the losses of USC and UCLA to the Big Ten. And now it is the Big 12, playing from a position of unexpected strength, that can be the aggressor.
“We’re in a great place,” commissioner Brett Yormark said Wednesday. “The question is, ‘Where do we go next?’”
For Yormark, that is a legit question. He doesn’t know. He spoke Wednesday at Big 12 media days in Arlington, Texas, despite not officially taking over his new job until Aug. 1. He comes from an executive role at Jay Z’s entertainment agency Roc Nation and has previous stops in the NBA and NASCAR.
His newness to college athletics was obvious in some of the details he clearly didn’t understand or avoided in his answers. No matter, he can catch up on that.
The league needs a leader, a strategist, a visionary. Yormark may be just that.
This will be a trial by fire and nothing is more important for the Big 12 than finding as much revenue as possible to close the gap with the far wealthier SEC and Big Ten.
And nothing adds more value than possible expansion — which can drive up television, media and marketing rights.
“The Big 12 is open for business,” Yormark said.
Yormark said he’s received plenty of calls, but he also repeatedly cautioned that any expansion has to be “additive and not dilutive.” That means if there is going expansion, it will almost certainly focus on current Pac-12 schools.
The obvious candidates are Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Arizona State, Utah and Colorado (an old Big 8/12 mainstay). These are…
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