Fine, I'll do it. I'll be the next Big 12 commissioner.

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One of the biggest and most important jobs in all of college sports has just come open. No, not the Florida State head football coach gig … although that is open right now.

The Big 12 will need a new conference commissioner. On Friday, the league announced that commissioner Brett Yormark is departing for a new opportunity outside of college sports.

I understand that not every fan (or heck, not every administrator) loved every single idea or proposal that came out of the Big 12 office over the past few years. But that’s what happens when you hire an outsider and give him a mandate to shake things up. And that process unquestionably worked more often than not. Yormark and his team saved the dang league.

The good news for the Big 12 is that it’s not operating from the same existential crisis position that it was back in 2022, when it appeared entirely plausible that the Pac-12, ACC and others could pick apart the league. With membership secure (or at least, as secure as any membership can be considered in 2026), the conference can focus on growing revenues, advocating for relevance and political power in a world even more tightly controlled by the Big Ten and SEC, battling a sea of lawsuits and figuring out where it should exist in whatever college sports becomes in the 2030s. That’s a tough job.

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In its search for a new commissioner, the Big 12 could go after a more conventional candidate. American Conference commissioner Tim Pernetti will be a popular choice, as he has both relevant experience and a personality that will command attention. But the league could have plenty of other options, from deputy commissioners to industry executives to sitting (and former) athletic directors and university presidents.

I’m sure many of those people could do an excellent job. But hey, the Big 12 got this far by rolling the dice and grabbing a leader who wasn’t on anyone’s immediate shortlist. Why not continue that trend?

I have just the sort of candidate in mind.

Me. The Big 12 should just go ahead and hire me.

Yes, I did, and yes, I am. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have any ties to the Big 12.

It’s true, I was born and raised in Ohio … a state that just so happens to have a Big 12 institution. And while it is true that I graduated from a Big Ten school, do you know what I did the literal day after I got my college diploma? That’s right. I got on a plane for Arizona (Big 12 state) and moved into a dorm at Arizona State (Big 12 school), where I lived while I completed my elementary school student teaching.

I’m also half-Brazilian. And you know where the Brazilians live in this country? Besides in Ft. Lauderdale, Miami, Boston and the New York metro area? That’s right, in Orlando. Home of UCF. That’s another Big 12 school.

I currently attend a mainline Protestant church (not unlike the folks who founded Big 12 institution TCU), but for decades, I was a Latter-day Saint, the sponsoring faith of BYU (Big 12 school). My wife went to BYU, as did several other family members and the majority of our closest friends. And while I do not have a direct institutional tie, I do think that having both a respect and love for LDS traditions and people and also a respect and love for the occasional margarita is very Utah (Big 12 school).

Also, I’ve been to West Virginia and Houston (Big 12 schools).

The Big 12 is a sprawling league that defies geography and institutional classifications. The league includes schools that are rural and urban, public and private, academically selective and less-selective. There are research schools and teaching schools, basketball schools and football schools. Upon first glance, the only thing any of them have in common is a desire to keep playing sports at a power conference level.

But this analysis, one that I myself was guilty of, is superficial.

The true binding force among Big 12 institutions is a massive chip on their shoulders. The chip that comes from being overlooked, even if you’re just as academically rigorous or research-focused as any smarty-pants Big Ten AAU institution. It that comes from being denied opportunities to demonstrate you can compete at the highest levels because your school didn’t make the right friends back in 1922. It comes from the frantic need to innovate and build, because you can’t rely on the resources from your more prestigious peers.

That tradition gave us the Air Raid, the Veer, the Split-T, the Run and Shoot, the Red Dog and more. College athletics is better because of the innovations born far away from the historical power centers of the sport, thanks to desperation and moxie.

And I know exactly what that’s like. I’m an entrepreneur with a non-journalism degree from a not-so-fancy-pants university. I only learned how to file FOIAs because I couldn’t get people to return my phone calls. I’m desperately trying to compete with better-resourced and more prestigious outlets … not just out of commercial necessity, but also because, goddamnit, I want to prove I’m just as good as the Chronicle of Higher Education or the Athletic or whoever.

That is not a Big Ten mindset. That is a Big 12 mindset. And in all seriousness, I think I really do understand that fire more than many suits with more impressive credentials and LinkedIn profiles. Because I think about that every single day.

I have a few ideas:

The Big 12 cannot afford to play the exact same TV rights game as the Big Ten and the SEC. The other leagues have too much of a head start and too many demographic and branding advantages.

So we wouldn’t play that same game. I think Big 12 leadership was correct to seek to split up football and basketball rights in future media rights packages, as the league seeks to be better compensated for its elite college basketball.

But beyond that, I believe the Big 12 has the opportunity to play the long game and stake a claim to global sports eyeballs — and eventual licensing fees — before anybody else.

That wouldn’t just be about playing sporting events in other countries, although the league would continue to look for those opportunities. As Big 12 commissioner, I wouldn’t want to just visit Mexico, Brazil, Western Europe, Japan and elsewhere. I’d want the league to live there, and to do that, we’d need to make sure fans all over the world could access and enjoy Big 12 sports.

My goal would be to become the first Power 4 conference to have a regular linear television presence in Mexico. We’d want the millions of Dallas Cowboys fans in Mexico to also become Big 12 fans on Saturdays, and we’d do that not just by playing football there. We’d play other sports — and we’d make licensing and business partnerships with Mexican broadcasters and radio stations a major priority. We’d work to do the same in Western Europe and eventually in places like Brazil and Japan.

I wouldn’t expect this to be cash-positive in the short term. I understand it would take manpower, cultural capital and meaningful resources. But I believe this would pay off on the recruiting trail for basketball, volleyball and Olympic sports first (so Mom and Dad back in Spain or Germany could more easily watch their kid compete in the U.S.) and then later in licensing fees. By the time the Big Ten and SEC tried to muscle in, we’d have already taught a generation of fans to love Utah football and Arizona basketball.

It’d be tough at first, but over the long haul, I really do think those planted seeds would grow.

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The Big 12 office cannot form an athlete union or unilaterally engage in collective bargaining with athletes. But we could communicate to our ADs, coaches, fans and campus communities that we don’t have to wait for Congress to solve our antitrust problems. As commissioner, I’d make it clear that the Big 12 is ready to negotiate as soon as players organize and designate a group to engage in the bargaining process.

Would that process invite lawsuits? Yeah, probably, but so does everything in college sports. Since the league footprint includes so many right-to-work states, the only plausible pathway, absent a federal bill, would be for the Big 12 to bargain with various athlete organizations and create collective bargaining agreements within the league. If we were first, I predict the other conferences would fall in line, rather than sue to try and prevent it from happening. And while everybody else would pretend this had been their idea from the start, we would know the truth.

We couldn’t promise the highest salaries in all of college sports, but we could make the Big 12 as aggressive as possible in being pro-athlete, pro-fan and pro-activity, rather than passively waiting for others with more money or power to create a new world order without us.

From gambling to health care, player eligibility, post-college success, financial sustainability and more, my pledge is to push the league to act thoughtfully and strategically — but, most of all, act. We would be leaders in college sports not through financial might or historical inertia, but because we’d be the ones getting out of the damn conference room and doing something.

I’m sorry if not everybody agrees, but I am very much pro-truck stops. When you’ve been stuck on Interstate 70 for six hours, you’re not praying you’ll see a Whole Foods off the next exit. You want a truck stop with clean bathrooms, a bafflingly large array of caffeine options and a place to buy cheap sunglasses, phone chargers and something to occupy the kids for the last two hours of the drive.

Truck stops keep this country going. Big 12 fans use them. And we wouldn’t be afraid to be reminded that our campuses don’t all sit in popular vacation destinations or bucolic gated communities. Let the Big Ten keep its arugula. We’d grab the burrito and get back to work.

Fans don’t like the Monster energy drink patch? Fine. As soon as possible, we’d work to find a league-wide patch that wouldn’t conflict with sponsorship categories that schools could more sell more lucratively on their own — and that would line up with the culture of our league. Would I start at truck stops? Absolutely.

I wouldn’t be afraid to push the envelope or to try to bring new events, partnerships and spectacle to the Big 12 — since again, we wouldn’t be able to afford to be complacent. But I’d also understand that the best partnerships are authentic to our actual brands and fans. So it’d be okay to say “no” to some things, and it’d be okay to say yes to stuff the SEC or ACC wouldn’t.

Do I have the legal background many other candidates would have? No, I don’t. I haven’t worked for a television company, haven’t sold sponsorships at the seven- and eight-figure levels, haven’t closed massive real estate deals, and I don’t regularly pal around with members of Congress.

But if a conference were to hire me at, like, $350,000 a year, then it would have plenty of money left over to hire people who have done all of those things.

I’m an outsider, of course. And this post is partly a commitment to the bit, partly a public cry to be liberated from having to care about email deliverability on a daily basis. I know I’m not the conventional candidate the elite executive search companies would snap up.

But look at conventional wisdom. Do you love what that’s brought to college sports these days? Can the Big 12 become the best version of itself through convention?

I doubt it. I might not be a Texan, Kansan or Utahn. But I do know what it’s like to want desperately to show everybody that Goliath isn’t as tough as he looks. That’s still pretty Big 12, in my humble opinion.

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