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. Today, so Brett Yormark wants a 24-team playoff? What changed?
Brett Yormark Flips to 24
From Brett Yormark, Big 12 Commissioner, earlier this week via a statement to On3 about expansion of the College Football Playoff:
“We like 24, we want 24,” Yormark said. “There are too many teams getting left out and 24 teams provides the type of access that is warranted. That being said, we need to do the work around the economics around a 24-team format and make sure we address any unintended consequences.”
Remember last year at Big 12 football media days in July when Yormark was adamantly opposed to a 24-team playoff and was set to support a 16-team playoff, along with the ACC and the SEC? What changed?
Back in July, Yormark made it clear he supported the 16-team playoff because it offered equal access to his conference to the postseason. In that so-called 5-plus-11 format, each power conference received an automatic bid for its champion and the highest ranked Group of 6 team got a bid. The other 11 bids went to at-large teams.
Yormark was asking for fairness and equity for his conference in the face of the Big Ten’s proposal, which was a 24-team playoff. But it was also weighted much differently. Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti wanted to ensure that his conference, along with the SEC, received more automatic bids than the other power conferences.
Petitti was making a power play in my opinion. Armed with the memorandum of understanding that the Big Ten and the SEC could ultimately decide the playoff format, the relatively new commissioner tried to ram a proposal through that would benefit his conference, and his partner, more than others.
Big 12 and ACC Push Back
Yormark and ACC commissioner Jim Phillips smartly pushed back. They also leveraged their relationship with SEC commissioner Greg Sankey to get him on their wavelength. It didn’t hurt that the SEC’s football coaches told Sankey last May that they were OK with the 16-team playoff with just one automatic bid for their conference. That gave Sankey permission to disagree.
That’s been the baked-in conversation for more than a year. The irresistible force of the Big 12, the ACC and the SEC against the immovable object of the Big Ten. But Petitti learned quickly, perhaps quicker than I expected him to, that there’s more than one way to get this done.
In February, after it was agreed that the 2026 playoff would remain at 12 games, the Big Ten went back to the drawing board. ESPN reported that the league was circulating an internal document to its membership with a new playoff proposal. It was still 24 teams, but the Big Ten eliminated the weighted bid system and proposed a so-called 23-plus-1 proposal. One bid would go to the top Group of 6 team. The other 23 would go to the teams ranked in the final CFP rankings, regardless of conference.
In this proposal Petitti removed the one significant barrier to getting Big 12 and ACC support. He removed the stipulation that his league would be guaranteed more bids than the other two leagues. That’s the reason why he suddenly has both Yormark’s and Phillips’s support for the new playoff.
Yormark’s Motivation
Yormark is all about access. He has been since he took over the conference. He wants his conference to have as much access as possible to postseason. He also wants the process to be fair to his conference. That’s why Petitti removed the obstacle to Yormark’s support.
Don’t be surprised by this. It’s how business operates. Yormark has been supportive of expanding the NCAA Tournament for the past few years. It’s not that he believes 78 teams is the magic number. But he knows that adding more teams will get more of his teams in the tournament. That’s what he cares about.
Yormark is about equity between the power conferences as well, which is why he originally objected to the first 24-team proposal. He’s all in on it now because the playing field is level and because if you paid attention to last year’s final CFP rankings, the Big 12 would have gotten five teams in a 24-team playoff.
Now Petitti has managed to flip the script on his partner, Sankey. The SEC is now on the island by itself when it comes to the 16-team playoff. Sankey is still vocal in supporting that format and it will be interesting to see if his or his football coaches’ attitudes change when they have their annual meetings in a couple of weeks at Amelia Island.
There are still things to be worked out. The Big Ten’s proposal eliminates the conference championship games and that’s a lucrative game for the Big 12. Texas Tech and BYU drew the biggest crowd in the conference championship game’s history last December. There’s also the matter of whether a 24-team playoff is good for a game that cherishes its regular season like Gollum cherishes a ring.
But this is business and Yormark and Petitti both get it. Yormark used his leverage to beat back a plan that didn’t benefit his conference. Petitti, smartly, removed the objection. And any good businessman knows that when your objection is removed you have little choice but to accept.
