Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark is stepping down effective Jan. 31, 2027, the conference confirmed Friday, Oct. 30, and the board of directors will start a national search for his replacement immediately. ESPN reported he's heading to a job outside college sports. The Big 12 board voted Friday morning to approve the move, according to BYU Cougars Wire, and Yormark approached league leaders about leaving 10 days ago. Nobody asked the athletes, the fans, or the campuses who'll live with the fallout.
Who Has the Power
Yormark is 60, a New Jersey native who'd never worked in college sports before he took the Big 12 job in August 2022. He came from Roc Nation, the entertainment company founded by Jay-Z. One USA TODAY report also describes him as a former CEO of the NBA's Brooklyn Nets. His contract ran through 2030 after a three-year extension he signed in May 2025. He's leaving anyway.
His own statement is the tidy corporate sendoff. "Serving as the commissioner of the Big 12 conference has been an extraordinary honor," Yormark said. "The next commissioner of this league will inherit a conference that is '16 strong.'"
The Athletic's reporting paints a rougher picture. Yormark had grown frustrated by the imbalance of power between the Big Ten and SEC and everybody else. On an Oct. 15 call about College Football Playoff expansion TV negotiations with ESPN, led by Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua, Yormark pushed back heavily, and the pushback continued for days. A handshake agreement with ESPN is "95 percent" done. Handshake. Ninety-five percent. That's how the future of a billion-dollar enterprise gets settled, by a handful of men on a phone call.
Yormark helped build that hierarchy. He was among the commissioners who granted overwhelming CFP power and revenue to the Big Ten and SEC in spring 2024. "I would say I was a rookie commissioner at that point in time," he told The Athletic this spring. "Today, I'm a very different commissioner than I was, and I'm not sure I would have made the same decision."
Who Gets Crushed
The Big 12 under Yormark signed a six-year media rights deal with ESPN and Fox Sports worth about $2.3 billion, and he beat the Pac-12 to market in October 2022, which fueled the collapse of the old Pac-12. Kansas chancellor Doug Girod said the Big 12 "could have ended up like the Pac-12 did, which was unable to get (a TV deal)." So the lesson is plain: whoever grabs the networks first survives, and whoever doesn't gets dismantled. The Pac-12 was effectively killed as a power conference when Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah joined the Big 12, bringing membership to 16.
A conference built on exclusive negotiating windows and early exits doesn't produce stability. It produces a permanent scramble. Expansion pursuits of UConn and Gonzaga never came to fruition. Earlier this year the conference finalized a private capital deal with outside investors that provided at least $12.5 million and optional lines of credit to member schools; no school took the credit. This summer came a multi-year Monster Energy sponsorship with jersey patches and on-field logos. An LED court at this year's Big 12 basketball tournaments was eventually abandoned over player safety concerns.
The legal fights tell the rest. The conference filed a federal lawsuit against its own member Texas Tech and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over the gambling and eligibility case of quarterback Brendan Sorsby. A Texas state court had ruled Sorsby eligible. Texas Tech and Sorsby pulled the plug on the eligibility battle, and the Big 12 withdrew its lawsuit in September. The SEC later sued LSU in a similar case. Players seeking a fifth year of eligibility keep filing suit, adding legal uncertainty across college sports.
What They're Calling "Order"
The Protect College Sports Act passed the Senate, but its fate in the House after next week's election remains uncertain. Yormark has made many trips to Washington, D.C., for meetings with Congress. The legislative route is the establishment's answer to a crisis of its own making, and it hinges on an election.
The Athletic wrote: "It all added up to reasons to find something new." One Big 12 administrator, speaking anonymously, said: "He was at his best as a wartime commissioner." Wartime. Over a sports league.
The successor list reads like a job fair for the same class. USA TODAY cited Fox Sports' Jordan Bazant, SEC deputies Charlie Hussey, Garth Glissman and Jessica Presnall, American Conference commissioner Tim Pernetti, and athletic directors Greg Byrne, Danny White and Allen Greene. All insiders, all from inside the apparatus. One stakeholder said the new leader "has to find a way to close the gap between the P-2 (Big Ten, SEC) and the Big 12 in a meaningful way in this new era."
The Big 12's TV deal expires in 2031. Players, meanwhile, appear in this story mostly as litigants and liabilities.
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