Last week, the Big 12 Conference staged its 2025-26 men’s and women’s swimming championships in Greensboro, N.C., of all places. That’s 1,797 miles from the UA’s Hillenbrand Aquatic Center.
That’s because the 10 (of 16) conference schools that sponsor swimming don’t have an aquatic facility suitable to host a meet with roughly 400 swimmers and divers. The old Pac-12 used to rotate its swimming championships between a Seattle-area facility and another in Long Beach, California.
Otherwise, the Big 12 has remained on familiar turf for its conference championships, as you’d expect.
The track and field championships this year will be held at Arizona’s Drachman Stadium. The league’s baseball championship will be held in Surprise, Arizona’s spring training facility of the Texas Rangers and Kansas City Royals. Softball finals will be completed at the elite USA Hall of Fame Stadium in Oklahoma City and the Big 12’s gymnastics championships will be in gymnastics-friendly Salt Lake City, home of the Utah Utes, which is to NCAA gymnastics what Duke is to men’s basketball.
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Commissioner Brett Yormark last year extended the contract for the Big 12 men’s and women’s basketball championships at Kansas City’s T-Mobile Arena through 2031. C’mon. That’s not good for anyone except Kansas, Iowa State and Kansas State.
Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark speaks at the Big 12 football media days in Frisco, Texas, July 8, 2025.
The easiest thing for Yormark to do was re-commit to Kansas City. His predecessor, Bob Bowlsby, kept the Big 12 hoops championships in KC since 2010. There were few grumbles because the Big 12 did not yet include Arizona, ASU, BYU, Utah, Colorado, West Virginia, Cincinnati or UCF. The old Big 12 was a Midwest League. Now it’s a conference that spans almost 2,000 miles from east to west.
Kansas City as the site for the Big 12 basketball championships is blah. It doesn’t work for fans in Arizona and Utah. It’s even a 600-mile drive from Colorado’s campus to Kansas City. That needs to change periodically.
Look around: the Big Ten will play its basketball championships in Chicago this year, Indianapolis next year, and Las Vegas in 2028. It has recently been held in New York City, Washington D.C., and Minneapolis. The Big Ten is not taking the easiest route by anchoring at one site. It moves its basketball tournament in an attempt to satisfy all parts of its geographically diverse, 18-team conference.
Yormark needs to create a similar plan to get the Big 12 Tournament out of KC in 2032 and thereafter. Here’s a suggestion:
2032: T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas
2033: Paycom Center in Oklahoma City
2034: Ball Arena in Denver
2035: American Airlines Center in Dallas
2036: Delta Center in Salt Lake City
Only then should Kansas City return to the rotation. It would give basketball fans in every Big 12 precinct except isolated schools in Ohio, West Virginia and Florida a more affordable and convenient chance to attend the league’s basketball tournament at a “regional” site.
When Yormark signed a five-year extension to keep the Big 12 tournament in Kansas City, he said “we needed to double down on our commitment to this community.”
Yes, this is a provincial point of view. Somehow, former Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott, a clunker among clunkers in college sports commissioners, hit it out of the park when he moved the Pac-12 Tournament out of downtown and disinterested Los Angeles in 2013 and shuttled it first to the MGM Grand Arena followed by the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
The Pac-12 Tournament became a place to be, a place to see and be seen. True, Arizona fans turned the Pac-12 Tournament into McKale North, but it was also appreciated by fans of all Pac-12 schools. Who wouldn’t want to take spring break in Las Vegas, even if your team isn’t a favorite.
Arizona guard Jaden Bradley (0) shoots against Florida forward Alex Condon (21) during the second half on Nov. 3, 2025, in Las Vegas.
Getting to and from Las Vegas wasn’t easy for any Pac-12 basketball fan. It’s an eight-hour drive from Salt Lake City and a five-hour drive from Los Angeles. Even the few Sun Devil fans who attended the Pac-12 Tournament had to drive four or five hours to get to the T-Mobile Arena.
Getting to Kansas City is a taxing travel issue for all but fans at Iowa State, Kansas State and Kansas. Worse, the city of Kansas City in mid-March is not an anticipated travel destination for fans at the league’s other 13 schools.
So, please, Commish, start planning now. End the Big 12 tournament’s two-decade stay in Kansas City. You might not still be the Big 12 commissioner when the KC contract ends in 2031, but please start working on a Las Vegas-Denver-Salt Lake City-Dallas-OKC rotation. Big 12 fans will love it (and you).
Given Yormark’s long history in the NBA and NASCAR, he knows the value of keeping things fresh. He can find attractive branding and licensing opportunities in Denver and Salt Lake City as much as he has in Kansas City. This isn’t the old Big 12, with Texas and Oklahoma and a bunch of Midwesterners. The new Big 12’s borders have expanded. Change is expected.
Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark last year extended the contract for the Big 12 men’s and women’s basketball championships at Kansas City’s T-Mobile Arena through 2031.
In a recent interview with Sports Business Journal, Yorkmark said, “Ultimately, (the Big 12) is about the schools, their investments and the decisions they make. I don’t play a role in that. But I can promote. I can market.”
Rather than spend another decade in Kansas City, marketing and promoting the Big 12 basketball tournament in cities like Las Vegas, Denver, Salt Lake City and Dallas would be more appealing to tens of thousands of fans, the first slam-dunk of March Madness.
Contact sports columnist Greg Hansen at [email protected]. On X(Twitter): @ghansen711
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