Big 12 commish mulls new event if conference title games end - ESPN

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Amid reports of plans to expand the College Football Playoff to 24 teams, Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark said the league would pivot if expansion were to eliminate conference championship games and would «replace» them.

«First of all, nothing has been done yet with the College Football Playoff. It's only speculation,» he said Tuesday at Big 12 media day. «Nothing is final, so I don't want to get too much into the details there, but tent pole events, for us, matter. Our championship game has been very valuable. Our basketball tournament, both men's and women's, has been very valuable. And if there is a point in time where a change is made, we will look to backstop those events with other events. We're in the event business. It drives a lot of fan engagement and excitement, so we'll see what happens in the future, but those are big moments for us. And if for some reason, if one goes away, we'll replace it with something different.»

Last year's Big 12 football title game between Texas Tech and BYU set a record for the league's championship matchup with 85,519 attending at AT&T stadium in Arlington, Texas. On the basketball side, the league announced in 2024 that it had reached an agreement to keep the men's and women's tournaments in Kansas City at T-Mobile Center through 2031.

Yormark said the expansion of the NCAA basketball tournament to 76 teams should benefit the Big 12, which had eight men's teams and eight women's teams in the field last season. Yormark also said Tuesday the Big 12 is the «second-best basketball league» behind only the NBA. The league's nine first-round picks in the 2026 NBA draft were a conference record.

Yormark said the league is having conversations about potentially going