LAS VEGAS – It's been a pretty remarkable 24 months for Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark.
He took some time at the dais on Tuesday morning at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas to recap the last 12 of them.
"Since our last football media days, we added the four corner (schools) and solidified ourselves as one of the top three conferences in America," he said, taking a little dig at beleaguered Atlantic Coast Conference and its continuing membership unrest.
"All four schools are here with us today … (and) I'm incredibly excited about what they bring to our league," he said. "Last season, Big 12 football fans packed the stadiums. Six Big 12 teams averaged 100% home capacity. All schools averaged over 88% capacity."
It's Viva Las Vegas for Brett Yormark and his recently reconfigured Big 12 Conference (Submitted photo).
He continued, "There was incredible late-season excitement heading into the Big 12 Championship weekend. During our football championship, we introduced the first-ever halftime show with Nelly, featuring our school bands.
"I think that was a great example of how you infuse the old with the new," he pointed out. "And our (television) ratings peaked at halftime, and we brought in a more casual audience to experience that halftime show."
He even nudged college sports' two undisputed powerhouse football conferences, the SEC and the Big Ten, clearly not minding the "disrupter" label that he's becoming known for.
"We will be the deepest conference in America," he said, pointing to the league's top-to-bottom parity. "Every week will matter. I am going to say that one more time: we will be the deepest conference in America and every week will matter.
"We have star power in parity," he added. "We boast some of the top players and coaches in the game. November will be incredibly exciting, and we will brand it as a race to the championship."
For better or for worse, Yormark has set the newly configured Big 12 down a much different path than it once took when it had college football bluebloods Texas and Oklahoma. Those two schools have now taken their great traditions to the tradition-ladened SEC, leaving the Big 12 in the position of having to reimagine itself.
Yormark has chosen a course that would make 92-year-old Don King take notice, beginning with his decision to bring this year's football media days to Las Vegas, the Bellagio and Allegiant Stadium, home of the Las Vegas Raiders.
"There is no time to press pause," he admitted. "We must continue to be bold and aggressive as an industry. The Big 12 will always be ambitious because that's who we are."
"I've always said that I think we have the best commissioner in all of the conferences," Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy said yesterday. "We have a guy that's innovative, smart, not afraid to take a chance. He's bullish on moving forward and doing whatever it takes to put the Big 12 where it needs to be for us to crown national champions in football. I have confidence in him."
Yormark announced some new staffing hires to oversee specific aspects of the league, including Dayna Scherf, who is responsible solely for women's basketball for the first time in league history.
"Given the growth of the game, we needed to double down," he said.
He hired Lisa Peterson from the Pac-12 as the Big 12's new vice president of Olympic sports.
A new governance group has been created to give student-athletes a greater voice. An alumni council was announced earlier today with two representatives from each school.
Cleveland Cavaliers general manager Mike Gansey and Georgeann Wells, the first woman to dunk in a college basketball game, will be representing West Virginia University.
He mentioned the PSL program around the conference men's basketball tournament in Kansas City and the creation of a Big 12 Pro Day in Dallas last spring that was televised nationally on NFL Network.
A partnership with Microsoft was announced yesterday morning to provide Surface tablets on the field and in the coaching booth to Big 12 teams for the upcoming season.
He continues to talk about creating a conference identity beyond the United States in nearby Mexico and branching out into other countries, including a football game this fall in Ireland.
Yormark said a conference-branded channel through its new partnership with TuneIn Radio will bring additional exposure to the conference.
"Obviously, I'm very passionate about where we've been and where we're going," he said.
He also mentioned some of the business endeavors aimed at keeping the Big 12 within reasonable financial range of the SEC and the Big Ten.
"Sponsorship business grew by 79%," he said. "Our ticket business grew 23%. To start the year, we launched a partnership with Allstate focused on Big 12 women's sports. We celebrated last year's four additions with Big 12 Homecoming events with a partnership with Sports Illustrated, and we'll do it again this year with our new additions."
The commissioner even alluded to private equity as a means of potentially generating more revenue, although he was unwilling to get into specifics.
"I do believe, given where we are, the industry, having a capital resource as a partner, makes a ton of sense," he said.
"That's really how you conduct good business; I really believe that," he continued. "And if you see where private equity is kind of making a path into professional sports, at some point in time, it's going to come here into intercollegiate athletics. We're exploring what that might look like. And a structure and a model of what that looks like is going to be critically important so that we're not compromising the long-term future of the conference."
Indeed, it has been an eventful two years for Yormark.
The conference has grown from 10 to 16 teams spanning a good chunk of the country from Utah to Florida. The desire to take the Big 12 westward and even beyond U.S. borders is another example of Yormark's aggressive strategy to capitalize on just about anything to create some sort of buzz for the league.
And being in Las Vegas this week falls right in line with his thinking.
"Being in Vegas is critically important to us," he said. "Even before last year's realignment, I said we had to be in Vegas and a little more west. This is the entertainment and sports capital of the world now. It's incredibly important for our brand and business, and we'll continue to explore opportunities to take some of our tent-pole events, championship events more to the West Coast if the opportunity presents itself and if it makes sense.
Yormark said he wakes up each morning thinking about how the Big 12 can become the best version of itself.
"Everything else doesn't really matter. And if we take care of business, we're going to be just fine, and I'm a firm believer in that," he said. "We're more relevant now than we've ever been. We're a national conference. We've got 16 great brands. We're going to be the deepest football conference in America. We'll be well-represented in the CFP.
"But I often say, I'm happy but not satisfied," he concluded.
