Last year, Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark boldly announced that the conference is “open for business” when it comes to expansion. But this week, his tune changed a bit.
During Big 12 Media Days this week, Brett Yormark gave a little more context to his comments from last season, and walked back his expansion talks a little bit.
“I feel like I’ve been talking about expansion for a year now,” Yormark said according to On3. “When I said we were ‘Open for business’ last year, I think people took that as, ‘My God, this guy’s new and he wants to go and disrupt,’ I guess in some respects. But indicative of my opening comments today, ‘Open for business’ meant that we were going to explore every and all opportunities to grow revenue, to diversify our conference and to do things that haven’t been done before. And we did a lot of that.
“Relative to expansion, I said that we have a plan, and we have a plan for expansion, and I’m not going to really address it today. You can as me, but I’m not really going to address it. We do have a plan, and hopefully we can execute that plan sooner than later. But as I’ve always said, I love the composition of this conference right now. The excitement the four new members have brought to this conference has been incredible. And if we stay at 12, we’re perfectly fine with that. If the opportunity presents itself where there’s something that creates value, and aligns well with our goals and adjectives, starting with the board, then we’re certainly going to pursue it.”
It sounds like the Big 12 might have hit the “pause” button a little bit.
[On3]