Big 12 media days are set to open Tuesday in Frisco, and while the league’s annual preseason gathering always brings plenty of football chatter, this year’s backdrop is bigger than any one team. Commissioner Brett Yormark is expected to touch on a few major issues that reach far beyond the usual fall preview, and Iowa State has a clear connection to each one.
The event returns to The Star for a second straight year, with eight schools scheduled for Tuesday and eight more on Wednesday. Arizona State, Baylor, BYU, UCF, Colorado, Houston, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech go first, followed by Arizona, Cincinnati, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, TCU, Utah and West Virginia.
Fans can watch both days on ESPNU from 10 a.m. CT to 3:00 p.m.
CT, with Big 12 Studios simulcasting the event.
One of the biggest subjects hanging over the league is College Football Playoff expansion. The Big 12 has made its position clear: Yormark and many in the conference want the field doubled to 24 teams.
That change would bring five rounds, with the top eight seeds getting byes. Automatic qualifiers for conference champions would disappear, and league title games would likely go with them.
The format would also shift two rounds of games, 16 total, onto campus.
Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard has not sounded nearly as eager. This spring, during the Cyclone Tailgate Tour, he said, "I'd support the SEC [in staying at 12].
The devil's in the details," Pollard said during the Cyclone Tailgate Tour. "Twenty-four sounds like a great formula, except you haven't explained any of the details.
And, as we all know, the details are typically what trip you up."
Pollard’s concern is straightforward: does a bigger playoff actually make financial sense, especially if it wipes out revenue from conference championship games?
First-year Iowa State coach Jimmy Rogers brings a different perspective. He has lived through a 24-team postseason format at South Dakota State, where he won the FCS championship in 2023 and made another deep run in 2024 before moving to Washington State for the 2025 season and then to Iowa State for 2026. Rogers said the model works.
"I love it," Rogers said at the same Tailgate Tour stop. "Obviously, coming from the level of FCS and understanding that, I think that once you get in, anybody can knock people off. And, so, it's really important to grow throughout the year and not give up on the season."
The other major issue is the Protect College Sports Act, a bill that could move forward only if it clears a full Senate vote before the August recess. Introduced by Sen.
Ted Cruz and Sen. Maria Cantwell, the legislation would let the NCAA limit transfers and eligibility, enforce a spending cap, allow conferences to pool TV rights and stop coaches from leaving before the season ends.
The Big 12, ACC and several smaller leagues support it. The Big Ten and SEC want changes, including language that would block media-rights pooling and add stronger antitrust protection to reduce lawsuits against schools, conferences or the NCAA. Pollard, meanwhile, has been openly irritated by schools that have not followed College Sports Commission rules tied to the House settlement.
"If you didn't want rules, then why did you create this entity. That's what's frustrating to me. The same people that say they want rules, only want rules that don't apply to them," Pollard said.
Even with momentum behind the idea of a federal college sports law, the road is still long. The bill needs 60 votes in the Senate, and there is no guarantee it would clear the House after that.
Then there’s the Big 12’s own internal mess from the Brendan Sorsby saga, a situation that briefly split the conference into a 1 vs. 15 fight. Texas Tech was prepared to play Sorsby despite his admission that he had gambled on his own Indiana teams earlier in his career. He received an injunction from a local judge, and Texas Tech backed him, but the rest of college athletics did not.
Yormark was left balancing Texas Tech’s position against the other 15 members. He sided with the majority, and the Big 12 filed a lawsuit that would have let the league handle the matter itself.
In the end, the whole thing resolved without a showdown. Sorsby opted to leave college football and will now prepare for the 2027 NFL Draft after the league declined to hold a supplemental draft this year.
Still, the episode left a mark. A majority of the conference was unhappy with Texas Tech’s support of Sorsby, and while many would have accepted the school helping him through recovery, putting him on the field despite the gambling addiction crossed a line for them. The question now is whether the league has fully repaired itself before the new season begins.
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The latest changes add more familiarity and more experience to that effort. Tim Buckley and Allan Hanson have come in as assistant coaches, Chuck Ruffing joins the bench after stops that include Western Illinois and a long coaching background in Wisconsin, and Richardson Maitre and Fletcher McGarvey are in place as graduate assistants for the 2026-27 campaign. Former Cyclones Diante Garrett and Thomas Pollard have also stepped into player development and recruiting roles, giving Otzelberger a staff that looks different, but still deeply tied to the programs past as the next roster reset takes shape. [Read more 🡒]