What’s going on in the Big 12 and beyond? I expand and explain every Sunday in Postscripts at Heartland College Sports, your home for independent Big 12 coverage.
Five Questions I Want Answers to This Week at Big 12 Media Days
It’s that time of the year. It’s the kickoff for talking season. You must give the Big 12 Conference credit for going first. They don’t have to compete with anyone when they start talking this early. It gets the entire media corps in the same place and teases out storylines that can be used for weeks.
We’ll meet up at The Star in Frisco, Texas, on Tuesday and Wednesday and ask all sorts of questions of Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark, players and coaches. I got to thinking, what are the questions that I want answers to? Here are the ones I would love answers to, though I’m not holding my breath.
To Yormark: What About Expansion?
The running joke for years was to ask the commissioner about expansion. That goes back to Bob Bowlsby before and after they tried to expand, and then after the league did expand in his final months as commissioner. For the past couple of years, we’ve kind of avoided the question because there was no reason to talk about it. But now there is.
Last week we learned that embedded in the Save College Sports Act there is a provision that says if a conference makes more than $700 million in revenue in a fiscal year that they cannot expand or merge with another conference. The threshold was higher in the initial draft, but the conferences it was designed to effect —the SEC and the Big Ten — lobbied to get it lowered, so now it includes the ACC and the Big 12.
I would love to hear what Yormark thinks of a potential bum rush to expansion if this bill passes? I made this point last weekend in Postscripts that the best way for the Big 12 to generate more revenue long term is to add more membership. He has a pro rata that allows him to bring in any new power conference member at the same amount as the rest of the league. It’s a powerful tool.
But if this legislation passes, he can’t use it? Is he going to answer the question directly? No probably not. But I’d love to see him tap dance just a little bit.
To Texas Tech Head Coach Joey McGuire: Can Will Hammond Get it Done?
The Brendan Sorsby debacle is behind us. I’m sure a couple of folks will try to engage with Yormark and McGuire about it and my guess is both will find a way to sidestep it. McGuire can just say he’s no longer on the roster and doesn’t talk about players not on the roster. This sounds like a much better conversation for a bar over a couple of drinks, honestly.
But the bigger question now is about quarterback Will Hammond. The question is two-fold. First, will he be ready for fall workouts after last year’s ACL injury? Second, can he get it done? The season is riding on Hammond’s ability to run an offense that should be tailor made for him.
We’ll probably gets answers to both of those questions.
To Cincinnati Coach Scott Satterfield: So What Did Y’all REALLY Know?
If we put a group of Texas Tech fans in the The Star then they would dog Satterfield until they got the answer they wanted, and even then, that may not be enough. That was everyone’s “other” favorite parlor game this spring — what did Cincinnati know about Brendan Sorsby and when did they know it?
Here is what has been reported: Cincinnati was alerted by a betting monitoring service in 2024 of a bet Sorsby attempted to make (all Big 12 athletes must have an app, Prohibet, downloaded to their phone). Compliance questioned him and Sorsby said he was denied access. To Cincinnati — if it didn’t have prior knowledge about him gambling and betting on college sports — that would have been the end of it.
Of course, Sorsby’s agent recently said that Cincinnati knew about it for years. Cincinnati denied that. USA Today’s Matt Hayes reported that two sources told him that Cincinnati knew he was gambling before the 2025 season. Now THAT would be a problem.
So who wants to ask him? Just make it the last question of the session. We have other stuff we need to ask coach.
To The Big 12’s Scott Draper: What About the Next Schedule?
Mitch Harper at KSL Sports did a great video interview with Big 12 chief football officer Scott Draper during the annual meetings in Frisco in May. Draper said the conference is looking at several different scheduling models, including the 10-game conference model you heard about earlier this year. But nothing is close to being decided.
I don’t think the Big 12 goes to 10 league games unless the league title game goes away. That would only happen if the College Football Playoff expands.
I am curious about two things. First, will they go with a four-season grid again? I think it would make sense to give the schedule more flexibility like they have in basketball to provide potential for meaningful late-season matchups.
Second, are they going to add more rivalry games or fixed games year over year? The folks at Iowa State and Kansas State wanna know.
To Yormark: Are You Down That No One Took the Bag?
Earlier this year the Big 12 struck a private capital deal with RedBird and Weatherford. There are a lot of different facets to the deal but the that made headlines was $30 million the line of credit available to all 16 Big 12 teams. To this point, none of them have taken the money. Not a one. In fact, Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard said that part of the reason they didn’t dip into it was because the interest rate was higher than he could get at a bank.
That opens a whole host of other questions. But I’m wondering if Yormark is disappointed that no one took the money? He brought a large amount of cash to the conference, and nobody took him up on it. Did he negotiate bad terms? Or does this mean that it was an irrelevant part of the deal? I’d be curious to find out how he feels about that part of the deal.
