Big 12 Media Days: Brett Yormark Fires Back – The Hunger Games Begin

Big 12 Media Days felt more like a pre-battle tribute show from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire than a typical preseason event. In this episode of First and 12, we break down the bold shots fired by Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark—especially aimed at the Big Ten and the rest of college football. From realignment jabs to playoff positioning and media narratives, the Big 12 didn’t back down. Hear why this moment could mark the start of a new era of conference confidence—and conflict.

Keywords:
Big 12 Media Days, Brett Yormark, Big Ten vs Big 12, college football realignment, playoff drama, Big 12 podcast, Hunger Games college football, Brett Yormark speech, conference rivalry, college football 2025, power conferences, CFP battle, Big 12 vs Big Ten

Transcript

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May the odds be ever in your favor. At least that's what it felt like at the Big 12 Media Days. I'll tell you why on today's show.[MUSIC] From all over home, the SAICs, Colorado, Arizona, SAIC to Cincinnati. We've got Big 12 covered from end zone to buzzer-beater. This is Verse 12. We're all at the pass to all 16 teams. All in every episode.[MUSIC] Hello and welcome to today's episode of First and 12. I'm your host Adam Gabi. Thank you so much for joining us today. We have a ton of stuff to go. The first thing I want to get into is Big 12 Media Days. Depending on when you're listening, if you're listening sometime around noon today, on Wednesday, July 9th, Big 12 Media Days are actually going on right now. You can tune in to those on ESPN2 or ESPNU, as well as ESPN+ on streaming. For those of you who don't know what Big 12 Media Days are, it's when the conference gets together. They essentially have a giant press conference with the commissioner, with all of the 16 coaches, as well as some of the more prominent players, four different teams. Those can be whatever players that the coach decides to bring with them. It could be starting quarterback, it could be running backs, defensive players, it could be a kicker. It's whoever the coach decides to bring. Typically, it's going to be your star players, or it could also be maybe a four-year player who hasn't necessarily been the star, but it's always been a big part of the team player. So they bring those kind of players with them as well. And today, when I'm watching and listening to the media days, it felt like the Hunger Games. If you haven't seen the Hunger Games before, I want to give you a very quick summary of it, so you can kind of understand what's going on. So the premise of the Hunger Games is that it's a setting that is in the future, let's say, a hundred years from now, and there's been this giant civil war within the country. And to essentially stabilize things, the country has divided into 13 different districts. And every year, they have a competition where each district sends two tributes who are teenagers, typically between 12 and 17 years old, and they duel it out in an arena, and the last person surviving is the winner of the Hunger Games. And so in the first movie, it goes just as every other year. There's tributes, there's 24 competitors, and the winner ends up being the ultimate underdog from District 12. The following year, they had what was called the Quarter Quail, which was essentially this giant competition every 25 years. They have this special competition where they tweak the rules a little bit. And instead of getting new tributes, what they did is they got 24 tributes from the existing victors. And so the people who got selected were ones who had already won the Hunger Games before. And so they get to the press conference, the night before, not the press conference, but the introduction show or the good bye show, whatever you want to call it. And typically this show features get to know the competitors a little bit. This is kind of a fun, lighthearted thing before the competition and basically people end up killing each other, starts to happen. And then in the second book or in the second movie, which is what I've watched, I haven't actually read the books. These competitors who were told you are a champion, you will get to live out the rest of your life as a champion. They all had to go back to this, get to know the tributes show. And they were just mad. And they were complaining and they were just throwing all of their anger out at the host and just let it all out. They were saying stuff like I was told that if I did this and I won, I would get the rest of my life in peace. Or why are they doing this to us? They can change the rules. I know that they've already said it, but nobody wants this. Why are we doing this? And it was a really powerful moment in the movie. And it was almost a turning point where the public almost seemed to have sided with the tributes and essentially demand that they change the rules back to the original rules and let these victors live the life that they are promised to have. Day one of the pink 12 media days was that same thing I just described. It was a lot of very direct messaging. It was very direct from the commissioner Brett Yormark down to different coaches. And I'm going to talk about all that. So I want to start off with Brett Yormark. And Brett Yormark's had a couple of things. One of them, and I want to talk about quite a few of the things he talks about. But the first thing that he talked about was the College Football model. And he said, we wanted to do the 5 plus 11 model. And if you don't know what that is, check out my other shows. Just type in first and 12 College Football Playoff. And I will explain that to you on a different episode in very in depth detail. Essentially quick version, 5 conference champions with the pack 12 now back. It's probably going to be the ACC, the big 12, the big 10, the SEC and the pack 12. So it will be those 5 conference champions and then 11 at large. That is the model that Brett Yormark wants. It's the model that the SEC appears to want. It's the model that the ACC wants wants. It's only the big 10 who's really dragging their feet. They want a different model that has automatic qualifiers. And the big 10 commissioner said in a quote, I'm paraphrasing here. He said, we want to have automatic qualifiers because that will more align us with the professional leader with the NFL, which is, you know, in the NFL, you get so many automatics in your conference. So in the NFC, there's the three automatics and get the wild card or the two or three at large. This was his quote, this is Brett Yormark. We continue to believe that the 5 plus 11 model is the right format. We want to earn it on the field. We do not need a professional model. We are not the NFL. We are college football and we must act like it. Talk about taking a shot at the big 10. Like there was no hidden message. There was no beating around the bush or trying to interpret. Oh, did he indirectly try to say something against the big? No, no, no, no. He was very direct. He was saying, we do not like the big 10s model. We do not think we are the NFL. We don't want to align ourselves with the NFL because if we do, nobody's going to care to watch because if you have the same product in two different divisions, you know, a NFL and NFL lighter college football, people are just going to watch the NFL. And that's true. How many of you watch the NBA G league? Isn't even called that anymore? I don't know if I see even called that anymore. I think they may have changed the name. What about the UFL? Who watches the UFL? Not a lot of people. I looked at the ratings. I personally enjoy the NFL. I'm not the UFL. I'm not an avid fan, but I enjoy watching football. And so I tune in. But I'm one of a million people around the around the entire country, around the entire world who's tuning in. The average NFL game gets north of 15, 20 million viewers. And so by college football, aligning themselves with the NFL, they're kind of pushing themselves towards that UFL, towards that NBA G league, towards AA baseball, kind of model. And Brett Ormark doesn't like it. He was very direct. We don't want that. Another thing he said, he said once again, and he's talking about the conference. I believe we will be the deepest conference in America. No league offers the competitive balance that we do. Again, just take it another shot because the SEC and the Big Ten in particular, a little bit of the ACC as well. They like to prop up their top brands and then act like those top brands represent their entire conference. So what I mean by that is the Big Ten will prop up Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, you know, Fooths, Constance, Goods, Sure. And they're just like, oh, the Big Ten Big Ten, look at us. Look at us. We have these three or four teams. All of our teams are like this. What they don't mention is that, oh, yeah, we also have Rutgers and we have Northwestern. And we have Indiana most years. Well, we always have Indiana, but like outside of last year, we have Indiana and they're always bad. And we got Minnesota. They're, they're okay, I guess. We have UCLA. They haven't been very good in a while. They don't talk about those teams. They, they act like those teams don't exist when they're popping up. Hey, we need four automatic bids. No, you don't. You don't need that. You only have four teams that are good. You got Oregon, Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State. Last year, Michigan wasn't even that good. They, they were okay. What are we doing? Like, why, why are we going to give you automatic bids? Because in the year 2025, you, you claim to have this, this idea, you know, and, but the rest of your conference isn't all that good. The SEC is kind of the same way. Now, the SEC is deeper. You know, they got Georgia, Alabama. They got LSU, Texas. But they also got Kentucky. They also got Arkansas. They have Missouri. They have Missouri. They've got South Carolina most years. Mississippi State. Who knows what Ole Miss is going to do this year? They've got Vanderbilt. But the SEC doesn't talk about those teams. They don't, they don't mention those teams. They only talk about their top six or seven brands. The rest of the league isn't all that deep. In fact, last year, remember, Oklahoma State, who did not win a single big 12 game, not one big 12 game. They were nine seconds away from being in BYU, but they didn't win a single game. They beat Arkansas. Arkansas was middle of the pack in the SEC. Arkansas went to a bowl game. Arkansas, I believe went, I want to say it was four and four in the SEC in SEC play. I believe they went four and four in SEC play. They were very much in the middle of the pack. Oklahoma State beat them. So I like this statement by Brett Yormark, just being very direct, very direct here saying,"Yeah, we are the deepest conference in college football." The last thing that he talked about was the preseason pull. And I actually submitted a preseason pull. It's going to be released by Gamling Gouchos on X. So if you want to check that out, it'll be out there. And I also had a whole show around my preseason rankings. But the media did not do a pull. And the reason for that is because last year, Arizona State was ranked 16th and they ended up winning. BYU was ranked 13th and ended up in third. Iowa State, I believe, was like ninth or something. Point being, the media pull definitely hurts the conference. And an exact quote was... And this is something I really liked he said. He said, "It disadvantaged Arizona State because there was this narrative around them, the entire season that, oh, but they're not supposed to be good. They're not supposed to be good." And he also said, "There's no value in a preseason pull because I love this." He said, "No one knows what they really have on their roster until they start playing games. It's brilliant. That's so smart because it's true." You have the transfer portal and you have NIL and you've got players leaving for the NFL draft. You have new walk-ons. You've got incoming freshmen. Nobody knows what they really have. I mean, again, look at last year, Oklahoma State and Utah were expected to be the two best teams. Neither of them made a bowl game. Arizona State, BYU, Colorado, Iowa State. We're not expected to be all that good. They all finished top four in the conference. And so what are you saying here is, no, we don't know. We have. So why are we going to disadvantage ourselves? Why are we going to put ourselves in a position to let narratives begin today on July 8th or July 9th and let that ruin the potential of some of these teams? Because I do remember that. I remember, it must have been week 10. Arizona State finally gets ranked and the conversation was, "Wait, wait, wait, weren't things supposed to be really bad?" They were just on nobody's radar. And because of that, it really did hurt them. And now that the college football playoff is moving to a model where there's no automatic buys for conference champions, this is definitely a situation where Arizona State would have actually been the 11 or 12 seat overall. They would have had to go on to the road, probably play Texas or Ohio State on the road. That's just a tough draw. That's a really, really tough draw as opposed to being probably ranked 9th or 10th where they should have been. And then you have a much more reasonable draw maybe you're hosting in that first round game. And it just made a big difference. So again, pray, you're just coming out. Boom, boom, boom, just. We're not doing the pre-season media poll because it's a disadvantage. We are not going to professional playoff model because we don't think it's right. We have the deepest conference in the whole country. Just laying out all these facts, all these strong opinions that are being listened to because what else is going on in the world of sports right now? MLB baseball is getting to the all-star break. Yes, you have Wimbledon if you're into that. That's it. So a lot of eyes right now on the big 12. There's no other conference doing their media days right now. So again, just throwing shots at the big 10 lob and shots at the SEC. Basically just saying, look, we're not going to take it from anybody else. This is who we are. This is what we want and this is why we're doing what we're doing. Again, I'm telling you, if you've seen the Hunger Games movie, you know exactly what scene I'm talking about. And that was what Brett Yormart did. Now I'm going to go into somewhat of the what the coaches said to Kenny and Dylan Hamm, the head coach of Arizona State was asked a question, how do you feel about the outside noise? Now that you're not expected to be, you know, the bottom of the conference, there's these expectations. He basically said, there are no expectations. Nobody really cares. Nobody's looking at us. You know, all those are just made up. And so why would we worry about that? We're not worried about outside noise because first off, nobody's really talking about it. And taking shots at the media and then just basically saying, we're going to go do our own thing and we're going to let the we're just going to let the chips fall. We also went on to say that he could care. He couldn't care less about the preseason poll. And he did say that yes, it did hurt them last season. Something else that I thought was kind of funny was Scott Frost. He was very, very direct when talking about the Nebraska job. And for those of you who maybe are a little bit less familiar with the story, Scott Frost was the head coach of UCF back in what was a 2017, 2018 when they had that great run. They believe they beat Auburn in a new year, six bowl and basically claimed to have a national championship. And Scott Frost was the head coach of UCF at that time. He then went on to coach Nebraska, who was his alma mater. Things didn't go so great. And so now he's back for a second, Stinett at UCF. And he said this during his question and answer thing. I said I wouldn't leave UCF unless it was someplace you can win a national championship. I got tugged in a direction to try to help my alma mater and I didn't really want to do it. It wasn't a good move. I'm lucky to get back to a place where I was a lot happier. What? Did he really say that in front of a national audience? Let me read that last sentence again. I didn't really want to do it. It wasn't a good move. Wow. Talk about a bold statement and I'm not saying that's taking a shot at the big 10 or anything like that because it wasn't not necessarily. But it was something interesting. No, no, a shot he did say is he was talking about money and he basically was saying that he doesn't feel like there's even financial and skipping college football and there should be. He basically feels that if we're all playing for the same championship, we're all playing for the same goal. Why are there different rules for different conferences? Why are there different expectations? You know, you're talking about the amount of conference games you play. You talk about the amount of wins it takes to get to the college football playoff, whatever it might be. And he said this quote, at least in the NFL, you know what the rules are. You know what the salary cap is. Right now at the end of the day, things are decided on the field. But way before that, they were decided in bank accounts and that needs to be leveled out. It's a sad state of affairs in college football. If he who has the richest boosters wins for a little bit of context, the big 12 was fourth and power for conferences and revenue sharing with what about 40 million dollars per school compared to 63 million for schools in the big 10 conference again, just shots at the big 10. I really thought they were going to take shots of the SEC, but I think it's an interesting strategy actually. I think it's an interesting strategy because the big 10 is kind of isolated right now in a lot of things right now. They are the ones that are really pushing the 442 to they definitely don't have the biggest voice in college football that goes to the SEC whether that's right or wrong is the truth. Greg Sankey is the unofficial commissioner of college football. I know he's not, but he is if he says turn left and people turn right, he throws a fit and makes people turn left. That's just how he works. And that's a large part because of the success they've had in the last couple of years. Again, with only a couple of teams. Again, we can't talk about the SEC be like, oh, the entire SEC is so good. No, no, no, it's Alabama. It's Georgia. And that's it. No other LSE won a national championship about what four or five years ago, 2019. I want to say it was 2019. And so it's only been three teams in the past decade that have actually won a national championship from that conference, but still the same. Big 10 seems to be the target right now. And I'm loving it. I'm absolutely loving it because I like to see the big 12 fight. You know, I there was those kind of two things I was looking forward to in these media days. The first one was, are there going to be any massive changes? Now, I wasn't expecting any. Again, I'm pretty in the loop of things. But every once in a while, there's a big announcement. I wasn't expecting any realignment news or I wasn't expecting anything with, oh, we're looking at to expand or anything like that. But I was wondering if maybe there would be some new initiatives, maybe some new schedule, ideas, like the big 12 Mexico has been thrown around and kind of faded a little bit, but just kind of things like that. I was expecting maybe one or two of those things. None of that happened today. But the other thing was, are the coaches and is the commissioner going to come in with some boxing gloves on ready to fight? And it was a fight. And I absolutely loved it. And I'm so glad it happened. I'm very interested to see what happens tomorrow. Unfortunately for the coaches who will be featured tomorrow and it is kind of random as far as who speaks which day. Mostly attention goes on day one. And that's largely because that's when the commissioner speaks. It's the first day obviously. And so we'll see what headlines come out tomorrow. Definitely address those on tomorrow show. But especially if there's something newsworthy. But it does feel like most of this stuff as far as national attention and the news and all that was going to come out today. So I'm so glad that Scott Frost spoke and just through those punches, just through those punches at the rest of college football, I'm so glad that Kenny Dillingham who's one of the more vocal kind of very emotional coaches. I'm glad that he spoke. A couple of other notes that I want to just bring up, not necessarily the most newsworthy per se. But Kalani Sataki had coached for BYU did address the J. Karets left situation if you haven't been keeping up with that. Rets left still hasn't entered the transfer portal and it's getting a little bit weird. It was assumed that he was going to enter and is still assumed he's going to. But there isn't any official news about it yet. And Sataki said the following. He said, first of all, I love J. Karets left. We love J. Karets left and appreciate all that he's done for a program. I think it would be inappropriate for me to make a statement in his situation first. So that does mean that he does know what's going on because he said, I don't want to be the first one to say what's going to happen. I think that's his right. I think it's a private matter that he can speak for himself and I'm going to give him the opportunity to do that. And if you don't love Kalani Sataki, he, I mean, even if you're a Utah fan, it's really hard to hate Sataki. He's just a good guy. He had the opportunity right there to have headlines. He could have said that because it sounds like he knows what's going on. He says, I don't want to be the first to say. So he knows what's going on. He could have broken the news right then right there, gotten a lot of attention for it, I would have made ESPN front page story. But no, he said, I want to respect Brett's laugh and let him do what he's going to do. So we'll see what happens there. I, it's not a story yet, but it's kind of becoming almost a story. And that'll be fun. Another story. Chris Clamon, who coaches at Kansas State, can I have some funny, funny words? He grew up in Iowa and so he was asked if he was an Iowa and Iowa state fan growing up. But let me get something straight. I grew up in Waterloo, Iowa. I was a Northern Iowa fan. I was not a fan of Iowa state. I was a Panther. He also went on to talk about a little bit about the rivalry game that he's going to have against Iowa state in Dublin in the first week of the season, week zero. In fact, they're going to kick off their game and be the first and only college football game for the first couple of hours. And so that's going to be an awesome opportunity. Big 12 fans need a really help that that's a good game, a competitive game to keep people interested. Also a little side note, the pop charts are going to be there. If you haven't paid attention to the pop charts, which if you're listening to this show in the middle of July and you don't know about the pop chart, I don't know what to tell you, but the pop chart, the last two years have just completely taken over the headlines, taken over all the attention of bowl games and outside of the playoff. And pop charts had some brilliant marketing. They put together that they've only been a bowl game for two years. But Iowa state and Kansas state are the two teams who won the pop chart bowl. And so they said, okay, those two teams are getting together, they're getting together in Ireland. There's going to be a lot of attention. So they're going to be a big part of that game. I don't know if there's going to be field decorations like you saw in the bowl game. I don't know if the winner is going to get it to pop chart, the giant pop chart that goes into the mass of Toaster. If you haven't seen it, just Google it. It's hilarious. I don't know what's going to happen there, but I thought it was kind of some smart marketing. And then on more of a serious note, Joey McGuire, on a little more serious note, though the last coach we spoke was Joey McGuire had coach of Texas tech. And he opened up his press conference portion by acknowledging and sharing that his team is praying for and caring for the victims of the flood and central Texas. It was a touching moment. And it was a moment that kind of brought everything back to reality for a few minutes. Sometimes when we talk about college football, we talk about the big 12, we talk about re-enliement or whatever else is going on, we tend to think that some of these stories are so massive that they're almost bigger than life. And I thought it was touching. And it was a cool moment to see Joey McGuire be able to, again, we've had all these shots fired across primarily towards the big 10, but also sort of just leadership in college football in general. And he brought it back to the focus of, hey, we're acknowledging this. This is hard for our community. This is real. People lost their lives, kids lost their lives. And we care about that. And it was just a moment that reminded me that as much as I love college football and as much as I like to get riled up about these random little stories that at the moment seem like they're going to change college football forever or react to some news that I don't always like and get super upset about it. In reality, none of that's important. It is just a game at the end of the day. And while we love the game and we're going to continue to talk about it, we're going to continue to have debates and breakdowns of projections and reacts to what's going on the SEC and the big 10 around college football. What's really important is people around us and the connections we make and the people we love. Again, it, listening to it just made me kind of realize and think that I need to appreciate the people around me a little more. Not just take for granted that they're always just going to be there. He mentioned that he talked to his wife about what if it was one of their kids and then maybe think what if it was one of my kids? You know, I've got two daughters and it was just a, it was a touching moment. I thought it really brought the day full circle. It kind of completed the day in a way. It's, this is a college football show, a college sports show about the big 12 and that's what we're going to talk about. That's what today was centered on and people showed up for big 12 media days and was in Texas too, by the way. It took place in Frisco, Texas and it was really cool. It's obviously see the focuses there. The players are there for a really cool experience. The coaches are there. It's more of a lighthearted kind of event where, you know, we're still a month and a half away from games and we're still two months away from big 12 play and I'm not saying that everybody's best friends and buddy buddy, whatever, but it was a lighthearted event and, and there's, there's some comedy in there and they're having fun, but and obviously there's more serious moments and there's those shots taken that I kind of mentioned of, of, of the commissioner and Scott Frost in particular. But then you did have those moments where it just became very real. I'm glad that that happened. I'm really glad that happened because it, it kept things in perspective a little bit and as we go forward tomorrow, I, I imagine as more Texas coaches take the step forward. Next stage, we'll hear more messages to the, to the families of, of those unfortunate victims of the, of the flooding. So if you liked, so we'll, we'll talk about that tomorrow. I'm super excited to see what comes out tomorrow and there's also some news kind of brewing right now with potentially a story involving President Trump and a big, what, and a college football commissioner. We'll see if anything comes out of that. We will definitely talk about day two of the college football of the big 12 media days tomorrow. Finally, we have our championship set for the best college football fan base in the big 12 in the semi finals. BYU took down Kansas and Texas Tech with a slight upset over Kansas State. They were the three C Kansas State was a two seed. So into the championship round and we, we're going to run this for two days. We have BYU facing off against Texas Tech, the battle of the NIL as the outsiders would say. So yeah, if you want to vote in that, just get on X, follow me on X at first and 12. That is first and XII get your vote in there. Retweet it. Share it with your friends. Try to influence the vote a little bit. Again, if you retweet it, you're a fan of Texas Tech. You're probably friends with a bunch of other Texas Tech fans. You get a lot of votes going that way, same thing to BYU. So we'll see what happens with that vote. We'll crown a champion on Friday. Thank you so much for tuning in today's show. Have an excellent day. Bye.[MUSIC](upbeat music)