(yahoo sports) The Big 12 is open to further expansion.
As the conference’s spring meetings wrapped up in West Virginia on Friday, first-year commissioner Brett Yormark met with reporters and was clear that the Big 12 has an interest in adding additional members to the league if they are the right fit.
As the conference’s spring meetings wrapped up in West Virginia on Friday, first-year commissioner Brett Yormark met with reporters and was clear that the Big 12 has an interest in adding additional members to the league if they are the right fit.
Two summers ago, charter Big 12 members Oklahoma and Texas set off the latest wave of conference realignment by deciding to depart for the SEC. With those two officially leaving the Big 12 in 2024, the conference responded by adding BYU, as well as Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF from the American Athletic Conference. Those four will become official Big 12 members on July 1, giving the league 14 members for the 2023 football season.
Yormark has consistently voiced a willingness to bring in additional schools and said Friday that there was a “great discussion about expansion” among the Big 12’s presidents and athletic directors this week. The so-called “four corners” Pac-12 schools — Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah — have come up repeatedly as rumored possibilities over the past year. UConn and Gonzaga have also been mentioned as possible targets for expansion.
Yormark also reported Friday that the Big 12 will distribute approximately $440 million to its 10 members from last year for the 2022-23 fiscal year. At $44 million per school, that’s a record for the conference and includes both Oklahoma and Texas. Last year, the Big 12 gave out around $42.6 million per member.
In October, the Big 12 agreed to a new media rights deal with ESPN and Fox through 2030-31 that is reportedly worth more than $2 billion.
