Bad news for the Big 12: Brett Yormark is on his way out.
The league’s commissioner is stepping down Jan. 31 for a new job outside college athletics, and that has opened the door to the kind of search that can reshape a conference. One name that keeps surfacing is Tim Pernetti, the American Athletic Conference commissioner.
Pernetti, 54, has a background that fits the modern job description. He played football at Rutgers, then spent 13 years in television, working for ABC and CBS, mostly around college football. After that, he moved into the business side of sports, serving as athletic director at Rutgers from 2009-13, then as chief business officer for Major League Soccer’s New York City FC and president of IMG’s college sports business before taking over the American in 2023.
That kind of résumé checks a lot of boxes for a Big 12 opening. The conference needs someone who understands campuses, media, business and the shifting economics of college sports. Pernetti has lived in that space.
Doug Girod, the Kansas chancellor and Big 12 chair, described the search as wide open.
“I’m going in to the search very open-minded,” Girod told ESPN. “I don’t need a Yormark clone. I don’t need somebody who hopefully has some experience with campuses, and mostly is going to be an innovator and help us on that path of revenue diversification and thinking differently about how we conduct ourselves and be the tip of the spear in some of these changes.”
If Pernetti is the choice, the Big 12 would be betting on a different kind of leader. Not necessarily a loud one, but one who knows how to navigate change and build revenue. Pernetti has already shown that he can do that.
At the same time, the Big 12 is not starting from scratch. Yormark has left the league in a solid place, and the next commissioner will inherit a conference that has already adjusted to a new landscape. But the bigger challenge now is finding someone who can keep pushing forward.
That’s where Pernetti comes in.
Girod said the league does not need a carbon copy of Yormark. What it does need, he said, is someone with ideas and the ability to lead through the next wave of college sports changes.
Pernetti appears to fit that bill. He is not the only possible candidate, but he is a logical one, and in a search like this, logic matters.
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