The Big 12 Didn’t Just Survive an Exodus, It’s Having a Renaissance

With Colorado on the way, the league’s membership has swelled to 13 two years after losing its biggest brands to the SEC.

Exactly two years ago, Texas and Oklahoma sent a formal request for membership to the Southeastern Conference. They were leaving the Big 12, a staggering development that seemed to spell the league’s demise.

Requiems were written, mergers were sought with other conferences (and rejected by those leagues), scapegoats were identified. The term “death throes” was in heavy rotation in describing the Big 12 that summer.

It is exceedingly difficult to survive as a wounded animal in the modern college athletics jungle. Yet here we are two years hence, with the Big 12 not just alive but sporting the teeth and claws of a fierce predator. Colorado is coming, the membership has swelled to 13 schools and more could be added soon.

It’s a testament to the league’s collective attributes, all of which revealed themselves in a time of crisis: resolve, self-awareness, patience, leadership, boldness and ruthlessness.

Yormark has been a home-run hire for the Big 12 at the commissioner level.  :: Jerome Miron/USA TODAY Sports

The resolve stemmed from the fact that the remaining eight schools all wanted to stay together if possible. Losing the two biggest brands in the conference was a huge blow, but removing heavy-handed Texas from the boardroom dynamics actually made collaboration easier. The partnerships were solid, and the league’s anchor in Texas remained valuable. Nobody wanted to give up on the league until it was absolutely necessary.

Self-awareness kept everyone grounded. The surviving members realized they didn’t have the marketing juice to go rogue and find their own deals in other leagues. Aside from members from the states of Kansas and West Virginia, none of the other schools—Texas Tech, Baylor, TCU, Iowa State and Oklahoma State—were the dominant brand in their state. Their strength was more collective than individual, so they leaned into it.

Patience kept the conference from a couple of quick-trigger decisions it might have regretted. First: immediately firing commissioner Bob Bowlsby, who took a ton of heat two summers ago. While Bowlsby was caught unaware by the Longhorns and Sooners, there probably wasn’t much he could have done to stop them from going even if he saw it happening. Bowlsby was a valuable steward through restocking league membership from eight to 12.

The second panic move the Big 12 resisted: not overreaching during that restocking. The four additions—BYU, Central Florida, Cincinnati and Houston—all made sense on multiple levels. Plenty of additional schools wanted in, but further acquisitions could have diluted the league more than enhance it. The Big 12 got the right new schools, and the right number of them.

The leadership piece is obvious at the commissioner level—Bowlsby steadied the ship and oversaw the first expansion efforts; now successor Brett Yormark has been a home-run hire. His swift action in securing the new media-rights deal via linear broadcast options was a master stroke, taking the sure thing as opposed to waiting and gambling in the fickle streaming space, and jumping the Pac-12’s place in line for a new deal also resonates nearly a year later.

But don’t discount the role of the conference’s presidents and athletic directors. Experienced ADs Mack Rhoades of Baylor, Kirby Hocutt of Texas Tech, Gene Taylor of Kansas State, Jamie Pollard of Iowa State and others formed a solid sounding board for Yormark when he entered into the largely unfamiliar college sports space. So have presidents Linda Livingstone of Baylor, Lawrence Schovanec of Texas Tech and Douglas Girod of Kansas.

The league’s patience has been counterbalanced with strategic boldness. Yormark was hardly a safe hire, arriving without experience on campus or within the league’s geographic footprint. Securing the future membership of the four new schools, within two months of the announced departure of Texas and Oklahoma, required a hurry-up offense and a recognition that time was of the essence. Similarly, the move to fast-track the media-rights negotiations showed a valuable sense of urgency.

The ruthless piece came from Yormark’s brass-tacks assault on Pac-12 stability. Some college sports leaders were put off by Yormark’s rather public wooing of schools from that league (SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has made oblique comments to that effect), but it might have worked. The longer the Pac-12 went without a concrete, dollars-and-sense response, the more frustration seemed to set in at Colorado.

Yormark kept up the pressure with some of his comments at Big 12 media days earlier in July. “We weren’t just speaking to the members here,” a league source says. “We’re speaking to Colorado. 'You want this? You want to be a partner in this?’”

And now the Buffalo has landed, as the Big 12 continues to be the aggressor in the survival dance with the Pac-12. As multiple league sources have told Sports Illustrated this month, the opportunity to add a Power 5 member was a strong motivator. The question now is whether one or more of Colorado’s Pac-12 compatriots want to come along.

“If Colorado brings the four corners [fellow Pac-12 members Utah, Arizona and Arizona State], that’s the ideal scenario,” one source told SI. “I don’t think that’s going to happen. Our schools love the four corners, going from 12 to 16. Can Colorado bring in Arizona or Utah? Arizona more likely than Utah.”

Sixteen is the ideal the Big 12 wants, matching the Big Ten and SEC, but 14 will work. Thirteen is tougher to manage, and if nobody in the Pac-12 rides Colorado’s coattails out, that brings Connecticut into play. (UConn is more coveted by Yormark than some of the current league members, so it would be interesting to see how that potential dance plays out between commissioner and campus leaders.)

Other options: San Diego State, which was left hanging by the dithering Pac-12, would certainly like to land in a power conference; Gonzaga is the top basketball-centric possibility; some have mentioned St. John’s as a hoops draw as well.

Regardless of what happens next, it’s been a remarkably successful two-year fight for survival by the Big 12. From eight members to 13 and likely beyond, the conference has removed itself from the endangered list. Its members are united, and there seems to be little concern about being raided.

Adding Colorado doesn’t appreciably elevate the league in comparison to the SEC and Big Ten. But it keeps the Atlantic Coast Conference on notice that an aggressive peer is always lurking. And it opens more distance on the Pac-12, a league that turned down a merger with the Big 12 less than two years ago.

The requiems are no longer needed. The renaissance is at hand.