Big 12 schedules, TV rights and more on agenda for Yormark
The Big 12 has decided on a future scheduling format – at least temporarily.
Commissioner Brett Yormark said that the league’s football schedule will be released in either late November or early December and will feature no divisions.
The league’s membership will grow to 14 teams once Cincinnati, BYU, Central Florida and Houston join in July 2023 and those teams will obviously be included in next season’s schedule release.
But that format is only expected to last for two seasons as both Texas and Oklahoma, which have already accepted invitations to the SEC, will exit after the 2024 football campaign. While there had been talk that the two teams would exit early for the SEC, Yormark said that won’t be the case as the two have reaffirmed their commitment to remain in the league through the current grant of rights.
“They’ve committed themselves in advance of me getting here and they’ve reiterated that commitment,” Yormark said. “So, they’ll be here through the duration.”
Over those two seasons each team will play each other at least once and there will be special consideration to geography and natural rivalries when putting the schedules together.
“Excited about what that schedule will look like when we finally put it out,” he added.
Yormark also provided some insight into the negotiations of the conference’s media rights agreement with ESPN and Fox, which currently runs through the 2024-25 season. The exclusive window between the league and the two networks won’t open until February 2024, but talks have been productive.
“We’ve had meaningful discussions. Initially it was all about is this something we want to pursue? Is there a desire to get to the table and see if we can do an early extension. I think on both sides the answer to that question was yes,” he said.
Yormark added that all parties involved are motivated but the question remains can they get to a deal? There are parameters in place that he is searching for and if they can’t get there they’ll wait 16-months and then go into the exclusive window. But he remains optimistic.
“My gut tells me we get something done before that,” Yormark said.
The first-year commissioner also shot back at the projections from media members which had the loss of Texas and Oklahoma as having negative effect on the upcoming media rights deal.
“Let me say it very clearly, we’re not going backwards and we’re not staying flat. We’re going up. The question is how far up,” Yormark said.
The final topic of note came with expansion and Yormark simply said that if it is additive they will pursue it but if not he is excited with the current composition of the conference.
“We’ll see where that takes us,” he said.
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