Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark is leaving the conference he steadied after Texas and Oklahoma bolted for the SEC, a stunning turn for a league heading toward College Football Playoff expansion without the executive who guided its survival.

ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported Friday that Yormark “made the decision to leave” and is expected to accept a role outside of college sports soon. The former Brooklyn Nets CEO will stay with the league through at least January 2027.

Brett Yormark’s Big 12 legacy

Sources: Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark is leaving the conference. Yormark made the decision to leave and is expected to accept a new role outside of college sports in the near future. He’ll be with the league at least through January of 2027. pic.twitter.com/M0XnkCIPfe

— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) October 30, 2026

The Big 12 named Yormark its fifth commissioner on June 29, 2022, hiring a Roc Nation executive with little college sports experience to replace Bob Bowlsby. He took over Aug. 1 and opened media rights talks with ESPN and Fox more than a year before the exclusive negotiating window, and the league agreed to a six-year, $2.28 billion deal a few months later.

That early deal left the Pac-12 exposed. So Yormark pulled Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah into the Big 12 in the summer of 2023. He also let Texas and Oklahoma leave a year early, calling the arrangement a “win-win for all parties.”

The board rewarded him with an extension through the 2029-30 academic year in May 2025, which means he’s walking away with more than three years left on his deal. This spring, the Big 12 became the first major conference to approve a league-wide private capital deal, a five-year partnership with RedBird Capital Partners and Weatherford Capital that sent $12.5 million to the conference office and offers each school a line of credit up to $30 million.

Not every pitch landed, though. The Indiana graduate pushed to add UConn and Gonzaga, but the league’s board didn’t approve either school.

Who leads the Big 12 next?

The conference hasn’t named a successor, and Yormark’s timeline keeps him in the office through this season’s Big 12 Championship Game and bowl season.

The next commissioner inherits a sport in transition. The CFP is nearing a deal to expand from 12 to 24 teams in 2027, a format expected to eliminate conference championship games. Yormark backed the 24-team model, and he said this month the Big 12 would build a new event to replace its title game.

“We’ll need another tent-pole event to take its place, and I’m working on that now,” Yormark said Oct. 19 in Ames, Iowa.

That project now likely falls to someone else, along with the Big 12’s next media rights negotiation, expected around 2030.

Yormark’s recent Big 12 remarks

Yormark struck an upbeat tone 10 days before the report at Big 12 basketball media days in Kansas City.

“I don’t think there’s a better time to be part of the Big 12 than right now,” Yormark said.

He also described his relationship with all 16 member schools. “I tell everyone, I’ve got 16 kids. And I love them all equally,” Yormark told ESPN.

Still, his final year brought friction. In June, the Big 12 sued Texas Tech and the Texas attorney general over potential sanctions tied to quarterback Brendan Sorsby, who left the Red Raiders for the NFL supplemental draft hours later. This month, Big 12 officials wrongly enforced a 10-second runoff at the end of regulation in UCF’s double-overtime upset of No. 2 BYU.

The new role Yormark is expected to take hasn’t been identified.