Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark has been leading the Big 12 through conference realignment as the Pac-12 dissolved.
Now, the Big 12 is set to have 16 teams next summer, a jump from just 10 this time last year. With the additions of BYU, Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF this summer, as well as the introduction of Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah next summer, Yormark says the conference is in a good place.
“Right now we’re done,” Yormark said, according to AZCentral.
“We had a vision. We had a strategy and effectively we’ve been able to execute it,” Yormark added. “Initially, I wasn’t sure if we’d go to 14 or 16. I think 16 was kind of a dream scenario, candidly. So from our perspective, our focus now is to integrate the four incoming schools as quickly as we can.”
Colorado was the first to jump ship, joining their former conference, and then when Oregon and Washington left for the Big Ten, there was a quick pathway for the other three schools to join the Big 12 as well.
Oklahoma and Texas will be headed for the SEC next summer, changing the historic roots of the Big 12. The Big 12 will now have two schools in Arizona and Utah, as well as their stronghold still in Texas. The conference features a school in Florida, and then schools throughout the midwest.
“We will create some committees made up of our membership and start getting out all those possibilities, keeping the student-athlete health and well-being as a priority and we’ve always had that as a guiding principle when it came to scheduling,” Yormark said of scheduling concerns with the geographic distances between schools.
