FRISCO, TX — Brett Yormark, wearing a well-tailored gray suit and a pair of brown Gucci loafers, walked onto the stage to open Big 12 football media days on Tuesday morning and told the sports world how great things are in his conference.
The league has new media and corporate partners. More social media followers. Additional national championships.
No doubt there was good news for the Big 12 commissioner to share.
But when it came to the baddest of the bad news, Yormark sprinted past it like a jelly roll that could muss that suit.
“Each of our 16 institutions contributed immense value to the conference,” he said in the football portion of his state-of-the-league address. “Arizona State earned its way into the CFP and played a thrilling Peach Bowl. Colorado produced a Heisman Trophy winner. Thirty-one Big 12 athletes were selected in the 2025 NFL Draft.”
The part that got zipped past without an excavation?
The league only got one team into the College Football Playoff a year ago.
The conference was expanded.
Ditto for the playoff.
And still, the Big 12 was the only Power Four league to get only one team into the inaugural expanded 12-team playoff.
The Big Ten had four make the playoff while the SEC had three and the ACC had two. That wasn’t good for the Big 12, especially since it had a 10-2 team that was left out of the playoff despite a win over another 10-2 team that made the field.
(More on that in a minute.)
One year of getting the bare minimum into the playoff isn’t crippling, but back-to-back years could be. Because the status of any power conference — and all that comes with that designation — depends on football, a league that repeatedly shows itself as less than the others risks a downgrade.
This season, then, is critical for the Big 12 to have at least two playoff teams.
“I fully expect the Big 12 to earn multiple College Football Playoff bids this year,” Yormark said.
I’m not nearly as bullish as the commish.
For starters, the Big 12 has a perception problem.
This isn’t the first time the league has dealt with a lack of respect. Remember when everyone in the Big 12 was chunking the ball around like a hot potato, scoring 50 or 60 points a game, and the national narrative was that Big 12 teams clearly weren’t playing very good defense and couldn’t possibly be as good as teams from other leagues?
That narrative has changed since every other league in the country started chunking it, too. Suddenly, defenses that give up 30 or 40 points a game and maybe more on occasion aren’t all that bad.
The perception of the Big 12 now is a product of parity. Now that OU and Texas have left, the league doesn’t have a handful of heavyweights at the top. Instead, just about any team can beat any other team.
As a result, the league is unpredictable and entertaining. Arizona State, picked to finish last, won the league last season, while preseason favorites Oklahoma State, Utah and Arizona held down three of the bottom four spots in the final standings.
The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.
Topsy-turvy makes for a good carnival ride, but it doesn’t exactly work in the tradition-rich world of college football. History matters. Pedigree sways. Brand names get the benefit of the doubt when all things are equal.
Look at what happened with BYU and SMU last season. Both had two losses at the end of the regular season, the Cougars to Kansas and Arizona State, the Mustangs to BYU and Clemson in the ACC title game.
SMU made the playoff.
BYU didn’t, despite having beaten SMU head-to-head.
Granted, head-to-head isn’t the be-all, end-all in playoff selections. But when you’ve got two teams with similar records, similar strength of schedules and such, one team beating the other and doing so on the road is a pretty good tiebreaker.
A Big 12 team not getting that grace should be concerning to the entire league.
So, what’s the Big 12 to do?
First, it needs to get a few teams to emerge as annual playoff contenders.
“Critical,” Yormark said of that notion. “I think parity matters.”
But …
“Elite schools that are always part of the conversations at the highest levels,” he said, “that’s what we’re working towards.”
The Big 12 has teams capable of emerging. Utah and OSU have been as good as any program anywhere in the country over the past couple of decades. BYU has a religious-related reach similar to Notre Dame. Arizona State and TCU have shown flashes recently. Kansas State and Iowa State are overlooked at your own peril. And no one is outspending Texas Tech right now.
You know what might be the dream scenario for the Big 12 this year? Arizona State builds on what it did a year ago and loses only one game all season, and that one loss is against an undefeated Big 12 team. That would start to establish some elite teams in the league.
Then, the Big 12 needs to beat other power-conference opponents. In non-conference play. During bowl season. Whenever those games happen, the Big 12 needs to win as many as possible.
This season’s non-conference slate doesn’t provide the Big 12 a ton of opportunities for those wins. The league only has 14 games against other power-conference teams, and none are all that marquee.
Auburn at Baylor.
SMU at TCU.
Iowa at Iowa State.
OSU at Oregon.
Baylor at SMU.
Utah at UCLA.
Those aren’t bad games. Frankly, they’re all pretty interesting, just as rivalry games Pitt-West Virginia and Kansas-Missouri will be. But none of them would make you stop what you’re doing to watch.
Still, the Big 12 needs to win as many of its games against other Power Four foes as possible. Even though no one game could win the league great favor, the cumulative effect of winning 10 or 12 of those games would be significant.
Sure, that would only be a start in changing the perception of the Big 12, but the league has got to seize every opportunity and take every step possible.
The ones it takes in Yormark’s Guccis will only go so far.
Jenni Carlson: Jenni can be reached at jcarlson@oklahoman.com. Like her at facebook.com/JenniCarlsonOK, follow her at @jennicarlsonok.bsky.social and twitter.com/jennicarlson_ok, and support her work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
