The winds of change are blowing fiercely in college athletics, and they show no sign of quieting down anytime soon.
The latest indication of further conference realignment comes from new Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark, who recently declared that his league was “open for business” in regard to expansion.
Yormark visited the University of Cincinnati on Wednesday and reaffirmed his interest in growing the conference, according to Justin Williams of The Athletic.
“Obviously going out West is where I would like to go,” Yormark said, per Williams. “Entering that fourth time zone. A program that has national recognition. One that competes at the highest level in basketball and football, stands for the right things, is a good cultural fit.”
That sounds like a shot across the bow of the Pac-12, a conference already reeling from the recent defection of USC and UCLA to the Big Ten.
The Big 12 learned last year that it would be losing flagship members Oklahoma and Texas to the SEC. The Sooners and Longhorns are slated to leave the Big 12 by 2025, but Yormark has expressed willingness to allow them to depart sooner.
In response to Oklahoma and Texas leaving, the league responded by plucking Central Florida, Cincinnati and Houston from the American Athletic Conference and adding independent Brigham Young. Those four schools will join the Big 12 in 2023.
For many years, the Big 12 was based solely in the Central Time Zone. That changed in 2012 with the addition of West Virginia in the Eastern Time Zone. Next year, UCF and Cincinnati will bring the Eastern Time Zone membership to three, and BYU will extend the league’s boundary into the Mountain Time Zone. Now, Yormark is considering the Pacific Time Zone and a nationwide footprint.
It has been reported that as many as six Pac-12 schools—Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, Utah, Oregon and Washington—are drawing interest from the Big 12, and Wednesday’s comments from Yormark only serves to amplify that noise.
Editors’ note, Sept. 8 at 9:38 a.m. ET: An earlier version of this story mistakenly excluded West Virginia as an addition to the Eastern Time Zone.
