The Big 12’s board of directors has agreed to a three-year contract extension with commissioner Brett Yormark, sources told ESPN.
Yormark’s extension will run through 2030. He’d originally agreed in 2022 to a five-year deal through 2027.
The Big 12 presidents are rewarding Yormark’s work stabilizing and modernizing the Big 12 in the wake of the Oklahoma and Texas announcing their departures in 2021.
Yormark took over for Bob Bowlsby in 2022, and he led two signature moves for the league — a new television deal and a four-school expansion. His early declaration of the Big 12 being “open for business” has served as a fitting mantra for a tenure that’s been highlighted by his constant pursuit of dealmaking.
Yormark has done considerable work in upgrading the experience and feel of both the Big 12 football and basketball championships, helping elevate those events. The Big 12 also added a conferencewide football pro day under Yormark, the first of its kind in college sports.
The aggressive pursuit and consummation of a new television deal is Yormark’s biggest moment as commissioner. Early on in his tenure in the summer of 2022, he prioritized and achieved early negotiations with Fox and ESPN more than a year before the exclusive negotiating window. A few months later, the Big 12 agreed to a six-year, $2.28 billion deal.
By going to the table early, the Big 12 positioned itself ahead of the Pac-12, which proved an inflection point in the Pac-12’s spiral.
The Pac-12’s weakness and failure to land a television deal of significant heft led to the Big 12 luring Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah as members. Yormark led that charge in July and August of 2023.
Along with the addition of those four schools, he helped oversee the transition of four additional members that agreed to come aboard before his arrival — UCF, BYU, Cincinnati and Houston.
Yormark has also been aggressive in further expansion, although the league has been unreceptive to the additions of Connecticut in all sports and Gonzaga in basketball. (The talks with Gonzaga eventually faded, and that school joined the refurbished Pac-12. The discussions with UConn stalled in September.)
Yormark was relatively unknown in college sports when the league hired him in 2022. He came from the agency Roc Nation and prior to that worked as the president and CEO of Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment (BSE) Global, which manages and controls the Barclays Center and the Brooklyn Nets. He also worked for NASCAR.
