Last week, the Big 12 Conference staged its 2025-26 males’s and ladies’s swimming championships in Greensboro, N.C., of all locations. That’s 1,797 miles from the UA’s Hillenbrand Aquatic Center.
That’s as a result of the ten (of 16) convention faculties that sponsor swimming do not have an aquatic facility appropriate to host a meet with roughly 400 swimmers and divers. The outdated Pac-12 used to rotate its swimming championships between a Seattle-area facility and one other in Long Beach, California.
Otherwise, the Big 12 has remained on acquainted turf for its convention championships, as you’d count on.
The monitor and area championships this yr will probably be held at Arizona’s Drachman Stadium. The league’s baseball championship will probably be held in Surprise, Arizona’s spring coaching facility of the Texas Rangers and Kansas City Royals. Softball finals will probably be accomplished on the elite USA Hall of Fame Stadium in Oklahoma City and the Big 12’s gymnastics championships will probably be in gymnastics-friendly Salt Lake City, house of the Utah Utes, which is to NCAA gymnastics what Duke is to males’s basketball.
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Commissioner Brett Yormark final yr prolonged the contract for the Big 12 males’s and ladies’s basketball championships at Kansas City’s T-Mobile Arena by means of 2031. C’mon. That’s not good for anybody besides Kansas, Iowa State and Kansas State.
Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark speaks on the Big 12 soccer media days in Frisco, Texas, July 8, 2025.
The best factor for Yormark to do was re-commit to Kansas City. His predecessor, Bob Bowlsby, saved the Big 12 hoops championships in KC since 2010. There had been few grumbles as a result of the Big 12 didn’t but embody Arizona, ASU, BYU, Utah, Colorado, West Virginia, Cincinnati or UCF. The outdated Big 12 was a Midwest League. Now it is a convention that spans virtually 2,000 miles from east to west.
Kansas City as the location for the Big 12 basketball championships is blah. It does not work for followers in Arizona and Utah. It’s even a 600-mile drive from Colorado’s campus to Kansas City. That wants to alter periodically.
Look round: the Big Ten will play its basketball championships in Chicago this yr, Indianapolis subsequent yr, and Las Vegas in 2028. It has not too long ago been held in New York City, Washington D.C., and Minneapolis. The Big Ten shouldn’t be taking the best route by anchoring at one website. It strikes its basketball tournament in an try and fulfill all elements of its geographically various, 18-team convention.
Yormark must create a comparable plan to get the Big 12 Tournament out of KC in 2032 and thereafter. Here’s a suggestion:
2032: T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas
2033: Paycom Center in Oklahoma City
2034: Ball Arena in Denver
2035: American Airlines Center in Dallas
2036: Delta Center in Salt Lake City
Only then ought to Kansas City return to the rotation. It would give basketball followers in each Big 12 precinct besides remoted faculties in Ohio, West Virginia and Florida a extra reasonably priced and handy likelihood to attend the league’s basketball tournament at a “regional” website.
When Yormark signed a five-year extension to maintain the Big 12 tournament in Kansas City, he stated “we needed to double down on our commitment to this community.”
Yes, that is a provincial perspective. Somehow, former Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott, a clunker amongst clunkers in faculty sports activities commissioners, hit it out of the park when he moved the Pac-12 Tournament out of downtown and disinterested Los Angeles in 2013 and shuttled it first to the MGM Grand Arena adopted by the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
The Pac-12 Tournament grew to become a place to be, a place to see and be seen. True, Arizona followers turned the Pac-12 Tournament into McKale North, however it was additionally appreciated by followers of all Pac-12 faculties. Who would not wish to take spring break in Las Vegas, even when your workforce is not a favourite.
Arizona guard Jaden Bradley (0) shoots towards Florida ahead Alex Condon (21) in the course of the second half on Nov. 3, 2025, in Las Vegas.
Getting to and from Las Vegas wasn’t simple for any Pac-12 basketball fan. It’s an eight-hour drive from Salt Lake City and a five-hour drive from Los Angeles. Even the few Sun Devil followers who attended the Pac-12 Tournament needed to drive 4 or 5 hours to get to the T-Mobile Arena.
Getting to Kansas City is a taxing journey subject for all however followers at Iowa State, Kansas State and Kansas. Worse, the town of Kansas City in mid-March shouldn’t be an anticipated journey vacation spot for followers on the league’s different 13 faculties.
So, please, Commish, begin planning now. End the Big 12 tournament’s two-decade keep in Kansas City. You may not nonetheless be the Big 12 commissioner when the KC contract ends in 2031, however please begin engaged on a Las Vegas-Denver-Salt Lake City-Dallas-OKC rotation. Big 12 followers will adore it (and also you).
Given Yormark’s lengthy historical past within the NBA and NASCAR, he is aware of the worth of protecting issues contemporary. He can discover enticing branding and licensing alternatives in Denver and Salt Lake City as a lot as he has in Kansas City. This is not the outdated Big 12, with Texas and Oklahoma and a bunch of Midwesterners. The new Big 12’s borders have expanded. Change is anticipated.
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Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark final yr prolonged the contract for the Big 12 males’s and ladies’s basketball championships at Kansas City’s T-Mobile Arena by means of 2031.
In a current interview with Sports Business Journal, Yorkmark stated, “Ultimately, (the Big 12) is about the schools, their investments and the decisions they make. I don’t play a role in that. But I can promote. I can market.”
Rather than spend one other decade in Kansas City, advertising and marketing and selling the Big 12 basketball tournament in cities like Las Vegas, Denver, Salt Lake City and Dallas can be extra interesting to tens of 1000’s of followers, the primary slam-dunk of March Madness.
Contact sports activities columnist Greg Hansen at GHansenAZStar@gmail.com. On X(Twitter): @ghansen711
