Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark Departs for Professional Sports Executive Role
The commissioner who stabilized the conference after Texas and Oklahoma left will remain in office through January 2027 to manage the transition.
By Chloe Wilson ·
Brett Yormark is leaving the Big 12 Conference to accept an executive position in professional sports. The move ends a tenure defined by aggressive expansion and a major media rights agreement. Yormark will stay in his role until January 2027 to ensure a smooth handover to his successor.
Yormark assumed the commissioner role in August 2022 while the conference faced potential collapse. At that time, Texas and Oklahoma had announced moves to the SEC. Yormark responded by recruiting four Pac-12 schools: Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah. He secured a six-year television deal worth $2.28 billion with ESPN and Fox Sports. The contract runs through 2031.
His departure leaves the conference with a 16-school footprint stretching from Florida to Utah. The Big 12 must now maintain cohesion among its members without Yormark’s direct influence. The conference recently distributed $610.9 million to its schools for the 2024-25 academic year. While this figure is high, it remains lower than the total payouts of the Big Ten and SEC conferences.
Leadership in the conference office must focus on executing existing commercial partnerships. These include a $12.5 million private capital framework with RedBird Capital Partners and deals with PayPal. Yormark previously brought marketing strategies from the NBA and NASCAR to the Big 12. He pushed for international games and separate monetization of basketball. His exit removes the primary architect behind those initiatives.
Preparations for the next media rights cycle are already underway. The current contract expires at the end of the decade. A new commissioner will need to present a strategy to major networks as negotiations for 2030 begin. Yormark had planned to leverage expanded College Football Playoff formats and digital streaming platforms to close the revenue gap with rival conferences.
The Big 12 Board of Directors faces a strategic choice in selecting Yormark’s replacement. Candidates on the radar include Mark Tatum, the NBA Deputy Commissioner, and Amy Brooks, who leads new business ventures for the NBA. Other potential hires include Zack Smith, an internal Big 12 leader, and Garth Lagerwey, the former Atlanta United CEO. Athletic directors Desiree Reed-Francois of Arizona and Danny White of Tennessee are also considered viable options. The board must decide whether to hire another corporate executive or a traditional college athletics administrator.
Yormark’s legacy includes transforming a struggling league into a stable 16-team entity. He secured long-term television security and innovative financial backing. The conference enters the transition period with established revenue streams but faces uncertainty regarding future commercial growth. Yormark’s final months in office will focus on governance and protecting the conference’s administrative structure.
Source: WHBO
