Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark joined the FOX broadcast during the second quarter of the Iowa State vs. K-State game on Saturday night in Ames and discussed the current landscape of the College Football Playoff.
The commissioner was clearly sending the message that the Big 12 Conference is being underrated heading into the first 12-team Playoff, which begins in mid-December.
Yormark began his comments on the broadcast by saying, “I think the committee needs to spend more time thinking about strength of schedule. I’m really focused on that. If you think about 82% of our opponents are Power 4 and we’ve won 71% of those games, and that leads all FBS. So I love where we are. And I think about the conference and there’s a lot of parity, but you think about the P4 across all the major conferences, there’s a lot of parity there as well. If you think about Texas, coming from the Big 12, and leading the SEC. And you think about Oregon, they didn’t even win the Pac-12 last year, and they’re leading the Big Ten. Not only is there parity across our conference, I think there’s across the P4. But to me it comes down to Strength of Schedule. And I think we need the committee to focus on that a little bit more.”
The Big 12 commissioner was clearly referring to Boise State, who, according to the latest CFP rankings, is getting the final bye instead of the Big 12. Boise State currently has a Strength of Schedule of 82, which is lower than every Big 12 team in contention.
Arizona State’s is 69, BYU is 47, Iowa State’s is 70 and Colorado is 61.
Yormark was then asked about when there will be a mandate for nine conference games, which the Big 12 and then Big Ten play, but the SEC and ACC do not.
The commissioner said, “It’s not balanced. Obviously there’s two of the Power 4 that don’t play nine conference games. And I think they need to take that into consideration as well, the committee.”
When Yormark was then asked about Chris Klieman’s comments this week about dropping back to eight conference games, Yormark said he talked about that before the game with Klieman, and added, “We’ll take to our AD’s when we meet next and start socializing that. There’s a lot that goes into it.”
Brett Yormark Calls ESPN About Coverage
Earlier today, we had an exclusive at Heartland College Sports regarding Yormark calling ESPN about its coverage of the league.
We reported that Yormark called ESPN personally and “put a lot of pressure on the network to fix the way they spoke and showcased the Big 12 Conference”.
Coverage of the Big 12 by ESPN, most notably its flagship program College GameDay, has been sparse for most of the season. And then came Desmond Howard’s egregious mistake in early November, when he acted surprised as to why the panel was picking the K-State vs. Arizona State game, which had clear Big 12 implications two weeks ago.
There was a noticeable shift in tenor and tone during the Week 14 broadcast from College Station. There was Nick Saban talking extensively about Arizona State running back Cam Skattebo, saying, “That’s gotta be my favorite player in college football, man. This guy is rugged and tough, and I just love a great competitor, and he’s all that.”
