Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark came to Frisco on Tuesday wanting to focus on the conference’s coming football season, and he made clear he wasn’t interested in revisiting the Brendan Sorsby gambling mess that had sent college sports into a legal tangle.
That issue was the first one thrown his way after his opening remarks at Big 12 football media days.
“I appreciate the question. I appreciate other questions that are probably going to come forth today.
Today is not the time to address that issue,” Yormark said. “Today is about celebrating the upcoming football season and celebrating our 16 schools.”
He would later return to that theme, describing the conference as “moving ahead as 16 strong.”
That included Texas Tech, one of the schools at the center of the league’s internal discussions if Sorsby had played this fall for the Red Raiders after transferring from Cincinnati, where he spent the previous two seasons.
Sorsby will not play, even after a temporary injunction against the NCAA last month would have allowed him to remain eligible. The quarterback acknowledged making thousands of impermissible bets worth at least $90,000 on college and pro sports, including some wagers on his own team when he was a freshman at Indiana in 2022. In past cases, that kind of conduct has led to players being barred from competition.
He later dropped his lawsuit against the NCAA, which made him ineligible again after the NCAA appealed the injunction and the Big 12 filed a still-pending federal complaint in U.S. District Court in Dallas. The conference was trying to preserve its ability to use league bylaws for possible sanctions against Texas Tech had Sorsby taken the field this season.
Yormark was also pressed by one reporter on why Texas Tech fans should buy into the idea of the league moving forward as one. The reporter pointed to the Big 12’s move last year against the school’s tortilla-throwing tradition, which passed on a 15-1 vote, and noted that Oklahoma State has an artificial noise exemption allowing students to bang paddles against the stadium pads along the sideline. Cincinnati was mentioned as well, given Sorsby’s former ties there.
Yormark walked across the stage, then asked the reporter to stand up and repeat the question.
“I said we’re going forward as 16 strong, and that’s my answer to your question,” Yormark said.
Yormark also unveiled a multiyear agreement with Monster Energy that will make the brand the entitlement partner for conference-controlled Big 12 regular-season football games, along with men’s and women’s basketball.
He said the deal is “built on the right brand and culture alignment. … (and) will take this conference to places it has not been before.”
The partnership will put a co-branded Monster Energy and Big 12 logo on football and basketball jerseys, fields and courts, with further integration across the conference’s digital and social media channels. Monster’s first college athletics partnership came last fall, when it became the conference’s official energy drink.
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