At last week's media days, Brett Yormark got on stage at AT&T Stadium and said he had a plan for expansion, though he wouldn't address it in front of the league's assembled media and an ESPNU audience.
Sure enough, later that day, Sports Illustrated addressed those plans. UConn, St. John's and Syracuse were mentioned. As were Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah. And don't forget Gonzaga.
Should the conference land all those rumored targets listed above, the Big 12 -- a league that spend a decade with 10 schools and will play this season with 14 before its roster once again matches its identity in 2024 -- would become the Big 20.
In his 11 months atop the conference, Yormark has unabashedly pursued his strategy of putting the Big 12 brand in front of anyone with a pulse and a bank account. Gen Z is a consistent priority, as well as putting the conference in all four time zones. (If you're a 15-year-old living in Medford, Ore., the Big 12 commissioner would like to speak with you.) "As we look forward, we will continue to innovate, create and positively disrupt, living at the intersections of culture, sports and business," he said.
Yormark believes college basketball is an undervalued asset, and he also believes the New York market represents an opportunity for the conference. None of this should be a surprise, of course, given that he joined the Big 12 from New York-based Roc Nation, worked for the Brooklyn Nets before that, and before that helped open a NASCAR office in the Big Apple.
Sending Bill Self to Rucker Park to teach the local youngsters the finer points of a two-hand chest pass is all well and good, but if I'm a Big 12 president, I'm reading the SI article (and, indeed, the many like it that came before it), and pausing to make sure the commissioner doesn't drag my university into an arrangement it can't get out of.
It's true that New York is home to many, many people, and some of them are even college sports fans. Basketball may indeed be an under-valued asset, but even Yormark admitted football does, and will always, drive the bus. Would adding UConn and St. John's make Vinny in Queens more likely to watch a K State-Baylor football game? Is he even aware K State has a football team?
Furthermore, the Big 12 proudly noted eight of its 10 returning teams played in bowl games last winter, the highest percentage in FBS. All four newcomers reached the postseason as well. And now you're talking about adding... UConn? Willingly doomed its football program to FBS purgatory so basketball could re-join the Big East UConn?
As one well-connected college sports insider put it to me at Big 12 media days on Thursday, "You already have one Kansas. Do you really need another?"
Perhaps UConn would be willing to keep its football program independent and trade the Big East for the Big 12 in a basketball-only arrangement. That solves one problem while inviting another: geography. Planting a flag in four time zones looks great on paper, but it's a cruel ask of the student-athletes who would be tasked with turning into reality. Even with Texas and Oklahoma leaving, the Big 12 is still a conference whose geographic center is somewhere in the vicinity of Oklahoma City. Maybe Yormark has a plan to play games in the Metaverse and he's not ready to tell us yet.
Setting UConn aside, St. John's is no slam-dunk either. As Matt Brown pointed out, it's difficult to square a strategy so focused on Gen Z with the prospect of picking up St. John's, a program whose heyday came nearly 40 years ago. Sounds like a program more interesting than a 56-year-old than a 16-year-old, no?
(If the Pac-12 indeed falls apart, picking up the Four Corners schools is a different conversation, but that's a gigantic if. Even still, there's a reason conferences historically fall apart when they climb above 12 members: it's dang hard to keep 14, 16, etc., schools happy even when they're geographically cohesive.)
Yormark was hired to leverage his connections in media, sports and entertainment to burnish the Big 12's brand, but if I'm a Big 12 president I'm beginning to wonder where is the line between that and intertwining Yormark's interests to burnish his personal brand.
The 56-year-old had never worked in college athletics before taking the Big 12's top job. The experience has done wonders for his profile as a Mover-and-Shaker; every story seems to describe him as a "bold" or "a shark who never stops moving." Yormark is a professional deal maker, and so it's hard to imagine a 2028 meeting to award a location for the next three Big 12 cross country championships really buttering his bread.
Yormark will likely be off to his next venture, leading holograms of Logan and Jake Paul on a tour of Asia, by then. And that's fine. But if I'm a Big 12 president, I'd like to make sure I asked my commissioner isn't treating my conference like a private-equity property whose value is to be pumped-and-dumped before I find myself boarding a plane for a football game in Connecticut.