For months there’s been suspense in college basketball regarding two of its biggest programs on opposite ends of the country. Would Connecticut and/or Gonzaga ultimately abandon their basketball-first leagues for the Big 12? Was the Big 12 even that keen on adding the Huskies or Bulldogs?
To whatever extent, that push came primarily because Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark was advocating to make the strongest hoops league in college sports even stronger by bringing the two aboard. For all of the millions of dollars that football brings in, Yormark, who has longstanding business ties in the Northeast, understands basketball’s global appeal and sees immense value and long-term growth potential in the Big 12 adding two prominent basketball schools.
“For Yormark, it is an international play,” a conference commissioner recently told CBS Sports. “I get why he’s doing it, I get his vision for it.”
But that courtship is dead, at least for the next couple of years. The Big 12’s raid on the decaying Pac-12 (Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah will all join next year) inflated the Big 12 to 16 schools. That’s quite the supplemental boost, and so that’ll be all for now. Big 12 presidents and athletic directors — many of whom were against adding Gonzaga or UConn from the start, sources said — are happy to be done and won’t be pushing to match the Big Ten’s tonnage of 18 programs.
Yormark confirmed as much this week.
“Right now we’re done,” Yormark told the Arizona Republic. “We had a vision. We had a strategy and effectively we’ve been able to execute it. Initially, I wasn’t sure if we’d go to 14 or 16. I think 16 was kind of a dream scenario, candidly. So from our perspective, our focus now is to integrate the four incoming schools as quickly as we can.”
Yormark specifically addressed Gonzaga and UConn during an appearance on the Marchand and Ourand Sports Media Podcast.
Either one of those…
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