The Big 12’s football coaches are united in a push to expand the College Football Playoff field to 24 teams, commissioner Brett Yormark said Friday at the conference’s spring meetings.
“I can tell you that, directionally, we like 24. We’ve said that. The coaches voted unanimously for it yesterday,” Yormark said.
Last year, the Big 12 placed just one team in the College Football Playoff — Texas Tech, which lost 23-0 to Oregon in the quarterfinals after earning the No. 4 seed as the Big 12 champion.
An 11-2 BYU, whose two losses came to Texas Tech, was the second team out of the 12-team field, just behind Notre Dame.
Yormark took issue with the Cougars being left out of the College Football Playoff last season.
“I think in some respects we are disrespected. I think BYU should have made the CFP last year and there was a lot of debate around it, but I feel very strongly based on their résumé,” Yormark said.
“Just speaking again to BYU, they deserved to be in the CFP last year,” Yormark said later. “We didn’t complain. We accepted the decisions of the selection committee, but when you look back at their résumé, their strength of schedule, the strength of this conference, they were very deserving, but we’ll see what happens this year.”
Based on the final CFP rankings, the Big 12 would have had five teams in if the field was at 24 teams last season — Texas Tech, BYU, Utah, Arizona and Houston.
With a 24-team format, however, the Big 12 would be forced to give up its conference championship game.
“Our champ game is very valuable to us. In my opening comments, I spoke very highly of what we accomplished this past year,” Yormark said. “So we need to roll up our sleeves, do the work, understand the economics on it and what that means for a 24-team format and we’ll do that with our colleagues. I plan to be with the CFP, the management committee next month, and I think that’s when the work will begin.”
Another potential move for the Big 12 is the possibility of moving to 10 conference games in football and 20 conference games in basketball in order to “raise the profile, narrative and viewership of Big 12 football and basketball.”
The Big 12 introduced the concept of expanded conference play to coaches and athletic directors this week, and discussions are still very preliminary. Currently, the conference plays nine league games in football and 18 in basketball.
The possible additional inventory of conference games would make the Big 12 more attractive to media rights partners during the next round of negotiations. The Big 12’s current media rights deal with Fox and ESPN expires in January 2030.
“When you do an analysis of our ratings this past basketball season, our conference ratings are three times what the out-of-conference control games are for the Big 12,” Yormark said.
“So if you’re in the ratings game, you probably want more of the good stuff and grow it. That was the impetus of the discussion of can we go back to 20? In 2025, we had 20 games and then we went back this past year to 18. So it’s certainly something we need to consider as we think about how do we grow the Big 12 moving forward? How do we increase our ratings?”
Other topics Yormark addressed during the Big 12’s spring meetings
How much revenue will the Big 12 distribute to its members?
Yormark said the conference’s gross revenue is $710 million, a record-high for the league, and that the net distributable revenue to member schools will “exceed our projected per-school distributions,” but he does not have a total net number right now.
On having a hard cap for revenue sharing
“I can tell you I’m not in favor of any amnesty right now. With the House settlement, we all signed up for a hard cap and that obviously hasn’t panned out as well as we had thought. So when you think about the discussions we’ll be having moving forward, it’s going to be around the cap. It’ll be around cap circumvention, what’s permissible and not, and how do we come together and create a model that’s sustainable long term.”
On all of the Big 12’s schools signing onto the College Sports Commission participation agreement that binds schools to the House settlement rules
“Well, listen, for us, it means we want rules and enforcement. I can’t speak for the other conferences. I mean, obviously they all say they want rules and enforcement, but they haven’t signed their participation. So that’s probably a better question for them, but I can tell you having spent days with our board and ADs and our governance groups, the Big 12 wants rules and enforcements and we want to be a leader in that area. And I think signing the participation agreement certainly is indicative of that.”
On rules that can be put in place to curb tampering
“(NCAA president Charlie Baker) gave us an update on how they’re thinking about reforming some of the tampering rules and I think directionally we like where he’s going. He kind of laid that out for us. It’s got a bit of a pro model to it where there’s a contact period before the portal opens and all that needs to be worked through, but directionally we liked what we heard. And on the eligibility, everyone’s aware of the age-based eligibility idea that’s on the table and I think that’s going to pick up some momentum over the next month when the cabinet meets later in June. “
Have any of the teams accepted the RedBird private equity line of credit?
“I’m not aware of that just yet. As I said earlier in the week, that’s a multifaceted partnership and at the core is all about commercial development and driving revenue and value for our schools. Having access to capital is always a good thing and we look at that as a safety net for schools when and if they want to do it and they have a year to tap into it. And we all know things change in our ecosystem pretty quickly. And although they might not want it today, that might be different in six months or 12 months from now. So we’ll wait and see.”
The Big 12 logo is displayed during the Big 12 championship game between BYU and Texas Tech held at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025. | Isaac Hale, Deseret News
