Barely into his second year as the Big 12's commissioner, Brett Yormark is sounding the conference's football bona fides and also indicating the league, more or less, remains "open for business."
Opening his comments inside the Dallas Cowboys' AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, with the proclamation that, "I believe we are the deepest (football) conference in America," Yormark also is sharing that the Big 12 does have a plan to grow beyond its current makeup of 14 institutions for the next year and 12 moving into the future.
"I feel like I've been talking about expansion for a year now. When I said we were open for business last year, I think people took that as (saying), 'My God, this guy is new and wants to go and disrupt,'" Yormark said. "Indicative of my opening comments today, open for business is that we are going to explore any and every possibility to grow revenue, to diversify our conference and to do things that haven't been done before.
"And we did a lot of that. Relative to expansion, I said coming out of our spring business meetings at the Greenbrier that we have a plan, and we have a plan for expansion. I'm not going to really address it today; you can ask me, but I'm not really going to address it. We do have a plan and hopefully we can execute that plan sooner than later."
Asked specifically if the conference would consider adding a non-Power 5 institution in a potential future expansion, Yormark said any potential new member would be evaluated on its individual merits.
"If they create value and align with our goals and objectives, it's a conversation we'll consider having," Yormark said. "... If within the value equation there's alignment ... Power-5 or non-Power 5, we'll look to pursue."
Yormark said the conference can stand as it is, but he repeatedly said the league would expand if it as a "value-add" to the conference that now has its footprint from Florida and West Virginia in the east to BYU in the west.
"I love the composition of this conference right now, said Yormark, who also noted the Big 12 is the only conference that touches three different time zones -- East, Central and Mountain. "The excitement that four new members have brought has been incredible, and if we stay at 12, we're perfectly fine with that. If the opportunity presents itself, where there is something that creates value and aligns well with our goals and objectives, starting with the board, then we're certainly going to pursue it. ...
"We're going to celebrate our 'Continuing 8,' and we're going to celebrate our new four and, in fact, we're going to celebrate Texas and Oklahoma and all the contributions they've made to this Conference since Day 1."