Brett Yormark Quit the Big 12 With Three Years Left on His Deal for a Job Nobody Can Name

The Big 12 announced Friday that commissioner Brett Yormark will step down on Jan. 31, with a contract running through 2030 and a next job somewhere outside college sports that no one has named. He's 60. When a man walks away from that much guaranteed money at that age, there are generally only two explanations, and the other one involves a boat.

Yormark came over from Roc Nation in 2022, the sort of hire you make when your conference has just lost Texas and Oklahoma and everybody's calling to ask how you're holding up. At his first media days he announced that the Big 12 was "open for business," which is what a store says right after the fire. And to be square with him, it worked. He got a TV deal done with ESPN and Fox ahead of the Pac-12, and the Pac-12 has since served as the sort of warning you'd stitch on a pillow. He negotiated Texas and Oklahoma out the door early, then picked up Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah. He leaves it, in his phrase, "16 strong," a number that'd puzzle anyone who remembers what the 12 was for.

He also tried a few things. He chased UConn and Gonzaga, and neither one came. He signed up Monster Energy as a sponsor, which is the most honest deal in college sports, since at least the can looks like what it's doing to you. He planned an LED basketball court for the conference tournaments, then dropped it over player safety concerns, which suggests somebody finally asked a player. He also filed a federal lawsuit against his own member school, Texas Tech, and Ken Paxton over a quarterback's eligibility, then withdrew it. There's a lot of men in Lubbock who'd pay to see that deposition, and now they won't get to.

An unnamed Big 12 administrator told The Athletic he "was at his best as a wartime commissioner," and I believe that. The trouble with wartime commissioners is that eventually you run into a peace, and a man's got to ask himself what he's for. College sports has settled into something else now, a place where everybody's paid and no one's happy and the lawyers have taken the good seats. Yormark looked it all over and did what any coach in the country would do. He left in the middle of a contract, and the word is that the next thing is outside college athletics, which is the first thing anyone in the business has said about it that sounded like relief.

The board begins its national search immediately. I expect they'll find someone who loves the student-athlete, and I expect they'll find him the way you find a good used car, by not asking where the last owner went.

They spent a hundred years telling young men that a commitment means something, and the fellow they trusted to run the place has just shown them what a contract through 2030 means in January of 2027.