Report: Brett Yormark signs three-year contract extension as Big 12 commissioner

Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark signed a three-year contract extension with the conference, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel. It’ll run through 2030. On3’s Pete Nakos confirmed the news.

“Sources: The Big 12 Board of Directors has agreed to a three-year contract extension with Commissioner Brett Yormark,” Thamel wrote on Twitter. “The extension will run through 2030, as he’d originally agreed in 2022 to a five-year deal through 2027.

“The Big 12 leaders are rewarding Yormark’s work stabilizing and modernizing the Big 12 in the wake of the departure of OU and Texas. He’s overseen the addition of four new schools and a new television deal that strategically boxed out the Pac-12 and fortified the Big 12.”

Yormark has never been shy about his goals for the Big 12. Heck, he claimed he expected the conference to be No. 1 in America when speaking last July.

“I will not stop until we are the No. 1 conference in America,” Yormark said, via Yahoo! Sports’ Ross Dellenger. The Big 12 began a new era last year with the departures of Oklahoma and Texas to the SEC. The “Four Corners” schools of Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah were added.

While the Big Ten and SEC dominate the College Football Playoff conversation, Yormark recently pushed back against the idea of automatic qualifiers for future expansion. That would allow those two conferences to have a certain number of teams every year compared to the Big 12 and others.

“Recently, in Dallas, we met as a management committee and we’ve been vetting out lots of different possibilities,” Brett Yormark said. “The emphasis of that particular meeting was really about looking back at this season, which was incredible. ESPN did a fabulous job. I think they captured everything we were looking for with fan engagement, excitement, with the new 12-team format …

“I like the 12-team format. I love it,. Whether we go to 14 or expand the field, I don’t know, and obviously it’ll be a decision amongst the management committee. As it relates to the AQs, and I’ve been on the record saying this, I don’t want an artificial championship. I want people to earn their way in. I don’t want it being predetermined. That being said, I’m open to discussion. I want to weigh the pros and cons of lots of different scenarios. Then, as a collective group, make a decision on what’s right for college football.”