With college sports at key juncture, what does the future of the NCAA tournament and CFP look like?

DALLAS — Within Big 12 headquarters on a Tuesday morning, the place is buzzing.

Phones are constantly ringing. People are milling between window-lined offices and rows of cubicles. A lobby monitor scrolls through highlights of each Big 12 member — four of which are ranked inside the top 12 in the latest AP basketball poll.

And the conference’s leader, sports entertainment executive-turned-league commissioner Brett Yormark, is pacing through the hallways in a tailored suit and shiny black shoes while carrying his normal air of confidence.

The Big 12 doesn’t look or feel like a conference that’s being left behind. And that is because, Yormark says, it isn’t.

“We are the No. 1 basketball conference in America,” he told Yahoo Sports in an interview last week. “We’re showing up as a conference in places that we haven’t been before, and we’re partnering with third parties that no one has ever considered. We are facing challenges but that’s not new to me. There’s a lot of possibility and opportunity.”

The joint venture that the Big Ten and SEC announced Feb. 2 creates a ripple felt in every pond of college athletics, from Division III and up. But perhaps the move’s most impacted entities are the two conferences, the ACC and Big 12, that reside alongside their richer counterparts within the most elite rung in the hierarchy of college athletics dubbed as the Power Five, or soon-to-be Power Four.

The gap between the major conferences and all others has existed for years, if not decades, but with the two wealthiest leagues teaming up, the chasm now emerging within the four power leagues themselves has never felt so tangible.

And yet, in the aftermath of the Big Ten and SEC announcement, leaders from the Big 12 and ACC contend that they will very much be part of the significant change lurking on the…

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Publish date : 2024-02-13 16:45:59

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