The Big 12 Conference and its media partners are exploring avenues to modernize football broadcasts, CBS Sports' Dennis Dodd confirms. Live in-game interviews, expanded locker room access and coaches wearing microphones were concepts discussed during meetings between Big 12 football coaches and administrators during spring meetings in Scottsdale, Arizona.
"Just being a fan of golf, being a fan of other sports -- basketball -- when I see that there, that engages me," said Baylor coach Dave Aranda. "Not knowing all the details of this particular matchup or the importance of this game, when you are brought into the inside like that, it connects those dots."
The report comes days after sources confirmed to CBS Sports' Dennis Dodd that the Big 12 is eyeing a multi-year deal to hold football and both men's and women's basketball games in Mexico as soon as 2024. Both developments fall under a larger first-year plan under commissioner Brett Yormark to bolster the conference. Yormark has already secured a six-year extension through 2031 for the Big 12's media rights deal with ESPN and Fox Sports.
"He [Yormark] is encouraging that," said Houston coach Dana Holgorsen. "Fox and ESPN is really encouraging that. It's just going to market our kids and teams more. Because of cell phones and cameras, everything I say and do is being recorded. Everything I know is being seen. I might as well go ahead and embrace it.
It's where it's headed," he continued. "It's the future of how you're going to watch games."
"We haven't evolved probably as fast as we need to. We've got to help them [rightsholders]," added TCU athletic director Jeremiah Donati. "The better product they put out, the more they're going to continue to invest in us. It's a no brainer."
Other new measures under Yormark's watch include a conference-wide pro day for 2024 in Frisco, Texas -- believed to be the first of its kind -- as well as a basketball partnership with Rucker Park in New York City. The Rucker Park plans entail youth basketball clinics involving Big 12 coaches this summer and potential exhibition games for men's and women's teams next summer.
Yormark arrived to the Big 12 in 2022 as a college sports outsider with past experience in the sports and entertainment industry. Yormark was last an executive for entertainment agency Roc Nation with additional stops at Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment and NASCAR.
Yormark's reimagined approach for the Big 12 comes as significant changes loom for its membership. Four schools -- BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF -- will join the Big 12 on July 1, putting the conference at 14 member schools. Oklahoma and Texas, however, depart for the SEC on July 1, 2024.
The Big 12 will return to 12 members for the first time since the 2010-11 school year once the Sooners and Longhorns depart, though Yormark has repeatedly voiced the possibility of additional expansion for the conference.
