The Big 12 board of directors has agreed to a contract extension for conference commissioner Brett Yormark, sources confirmed to The Athletic.
The three-year extension will run through 2030, and extends the original five-year contract Yormark signed when he was hired by the Big 12 in 2022.
Yormark, who took over for the retiring Bob Bowlsby, has had a busy few years in charge of the conference, which saw Texas and Oklahoma announce their departures for the SEC in 2021. Yormark took over during the transition of BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF, schools Bowlsby added in the wake of the Texas and Oklahoma decisions. Yormark also famously beat the Pac-12 to market in signing a new television rights contract with Fox and ESPN in October 2022. This precipitated the collapse of the Pac-12, with Yormark eventually leading the charge to add the Four Corner schools in 2023: Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah.
Those moves stabilized the Big 12 amid the most recent wave of conference realignment, and underscored Yormark’s ambitions to establish a conference that he has consistently described as “open for business.”
Yormark, 58, came to the Big 12 with a background in sports management but as a relative outsider in college athletics. Before his hiring in 2022, he worked for Roc Nation, the Brooklyn Nets and NASCAR. He has a reputation as a deal-maker, and has been aggressive in his pursuit of expansion and new ventures during his tenure with the Big 12, though not all of them have come to fruition, including pursuits of UConn and Gonzaga and exploring private equity investments and naming rights opportunities.
But the conference has instituted a leaguewide football pro day and made a number of attention-grabbing partnerships, including a buzzy and divisive court design at this year’s Big 12 men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. As the power conferences prepare for a new era of college sports with the potential House settlement and direct revenue sharing on the horizon, Yormark has strived to best position the Big 12 through new revenue streams and discussions regarding College Football Playoff changes and NCAA Tournament expansion.
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