Berry Tramel has seen the Big 12 evolve like few others from his position in multiple Oklahoma newsrooms since the heady days of the initial Big 8/SWC merger that formed the league in the 1990s.
While the league, he admits, has become what he refers to as essentially “a new conference” over the past 1-2 years, there are plenty of positives to the growth of the Big 12. One of those, according to Tramel, is the leadership of conference commissioner Brett Yormark.
"One thing I've detected among those schools, they all believe in Brett Yormark,” Tramel said. “They love his aggression, his passion and his marketing. I think they loved Bob Bowlsby, too; the leadership before that not so much, but for the first time literally in forever, there is this flood of ideas and this 'we don't have to sit here and take it anymore.' We'll do all kinds of things and see what happens," he said.
Yormark is the conference's fifth commissioner in it’s history, and perhaps the one with the most outside-the-box approach to the job. He brings CEO experience from both entertainment company Roc Nation and sports conglomerate Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment (which oversees the Brooklyn Nets, the Barclays Center, the New York Islanders, the New York Liberty, and the Nassau Coliseum), and looks to use his business centric mind to help the league adapt to the ever-changing landscape of Division 1 sports.
"Now, they don't always comprehend all of (Yormark's) ideas, but they are trusting him and at least they think they have someone advocating on our side that's outside of academia and traditionalism,” said Tramel.
While the Big 12 passed what Tramel calls it’s “glory days” it still occupies a spot as what many are acknowledging to be the third-best Division 1 football conference behind power players in the SEC and Big Ten, and potentially the top college basketball conference. That position in today’s landscape offers some benefits, provided the league acknowledges where it sits.
"Twenty years ago, was the best conference, or at least the equal to the SEC,” Tramel said. “It's not that anymore. People in the know, know that. But that doesn't mean you can't fight back, or you can't build up. This idea that the Big 12 is now No. 3, I think that appeals to the people in the Big 12 because for the last 10 years they've been told they are No. 5. 'You are going to fall apart' and blah, blah, blah.”
He said one positive about Yormark’s leadership in recent times, and even the leadership of previous commissioners, is that the league never suffered from leadership that resulted in diminishment of the league’s reputation or even a collapse, such as the Pac-12 (and potentially the ACC in the future).
"I don't know if the Big 12 was ever the victims of bad leadership like that," he added. "I never really blamed the leadership in the Big 12. The arrogance from the schools at the top – Texas, Texas A&M, Nebraska and Oklahoma – those four were the problem at the start. They got off on the wrong foot, but the Pac-12 just had bad leadership. Sometimes you can't overcome that."