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SALT LAKE CITY — Tuesday's Big 12 women's basketball media days was the first day that programs at Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah made public appearances wearing the Big 12 logo, and commissioner Brett Yormark remains bullish on the league's trajectory in the sport.
Even with the departures of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC, the new additions give the 16-team league eight members that played in the NCAA Tournament a year ago, including a pair of Sweet 16 teams in Colorado and Iowa State.
National television broadcasts are up among the league's women's basketball slate, with the annual BYU-Utah rivalry game Jan. 25 on ESPNU as one of 19 games that will be carried by ESPN or FOX during the 2024-25 season.
Yormark didn't balk at the notion that completing the Holy War rivalry, adding the Territorial Cup series between Arizona and Arizona State, and Colorado rejoining the league were key additions for his league.
"That was a huge get for us, across the board," he said. "It's helped us in football, it's helped us in women's and men's basketball, and, obviously, in Olympic sports.
"I think you're going to see a lot of ratings increases in men's and women's sports, so we're excited about it. It gives us a national footprint, gets us into a different time zone. It's exactly what we had hoped for, and it's playing out each week right now."
The Big 12 announced a key change to the conference women's basketball tournament, which will be played March 5-9 at at Kansas City's T-Mobile Center for the second consecutive season.
The championship game will now air Sunday, March 9 on ESPN unless BYU advances to the title game, in which case the game would be moved to Monday, March 10 due to the school's policy against playing on Sundays and will air on ESPN2.
The top four teams in the league's regular-season standings will receive a double bye to the conference tournament quarterfinals, with teams finishing fifth through eighth receiving a bye to the second round.
With the increased exposure, the conference hopes to capitalize on the surge of interest in women's basketball, both in college and the WNBA.
"I think we're doing it already," said Yormark, noting that attendance, ticket sales and ratings are all up in women's basketball across the conference.
He added that he believes there is "real upside" to potentially spinning off the conference's media rights for men's and women's basketball into a separate entity from football in upcoming media rights contracts.
With the addition of the four new schools, the conference will expand to a 20-game league schedule for the first time in men's basketball (women's basketball will play an 18-game schedule, based on a combination of geography, historical results and coaches' input).
But Yormark cautioned that league officials aren't necessarily fully intent on the move, either.
"We're going to see how it goes this year," he said. "I don't think it's set in stone. We'll evaluate it with our coaches during the season and, obviously, following the season, and we'll make that determination at that point in time if this is something we want to stick to."
As he did during Big 12 football media days in July in Las Vegas, Yormark again floated the idea of private capital — a massive cash infusion from private equity partners that has been discussed across college athletics — to better prepare the conference for the future, including potential revenue sharing enabled by a settlement of the House v. NCAA lawsuit.
"Everybody talks about private equity, and I don't really talk about private equity as much as I talk about: Should we be exploring a strategic partner — someone that provides capital resources and strategy to help us build our business?" Yormark said. "There's no pride in authorship, and I'm a big believer in outsourcing to people that know more than we do.
"Does that mean that we end up with a strategic partner? Maybe, maybe not. But it's incumbent upon me as the commissioner to explore every and all options, to make sure that we're as strong as we can be as a conference. So I'm doing my appropriate due diligence right now. I don't have a crystal ball, and who knows what the future holds when it comes to capital and how it makes its way into our ecosystem. But from my perspective, I'm doing the appropriate due diligence on behalf of the conference, and we'll see where it lands."
Yormark said that league schools plan to be "competitive" as one of the "top conferences in America" with the likely forthcoming revenue sharing model.
"Candidly, I don't think there's ever been a better time for college athletics than right now," he said.
