Brett Yormark claims basketball is undervalued in college sports

The Big 12 was one of the leagues that took center stage amidst conference realignment with their role in the movement. Even so, commissioner Brett Yormark doesn’t want the role that college basketball played in their decisions to be overlooked.

Yormark commented on the importance of Big 12 basketball in an interview on ‘The Marchand and Ourand Sports Media Podcast’. In the end, he was very pleased with the additions that they made, especially with what they can be for them on the court, and where those teams set the conference up to go in the future.

“It’s growing. I’m excited about where we’re going,” Yormark said. “When you think about realignment expansion, my goal wasn’t to compromise football. My goal was to grow football while also growing basketball. I think we’ve done that.”

“When you think about the four incoming schools? I mean Arizona coming into this conference. Even Colorado will be a Top-25 school this year. Arizona State is obviously very, very good and Utah is improving. I mean we doubled down on basketball while also improving football,” said Yormark. “I’m really excited. We are the deepest conference, I think, in America when it comes to football but, arguably, we are the number one conference in basketball. I’m excited about that.”

The Big 12 could have actually ended up even better in basketball than they already are. They already have Baylor, Houston, Kansas, and, for the moment, Texas. Then, next year, they’ll bring in Arizona. Finally, per reports, they could have even added Gonzaga and UConn, two powerhouses, had Yormark not elected to go in a different direction.

Overall, Yormark’s excitement is based on how they can monetize basketball in the future. He is also very interested in how he can take their hoops to an international stage in the near future.

“Basketball, also, was a catalyst for me to do a lot of different things, a catalyst for international expansion. It’s very tough to take football internationally but basketball is very easy. It’s a big part of our Mexico strategy, which I announced a couple of months ago where we’re going to Mexico in the fall of 2024 with Kansas and Houston,” Yormark said. “We’ll be announcing some other initiatives around basketball and how we’re going to monetize it.”

Money in football has driven much of the narrative around realignment. However, Yormark wants everyone to know how important that basketball is going to be for the future of the Big 12.

“I’m excited about the opportunity to further leverage basketball, especially in that next media cycle,” said Yormark. “I have gone on record saying maybe we bifurcate football and basketball, maybe we don’t. But we’ll have the optionality, for sure, to do it and we’ll see where we can create the most value.”