Brett Yormark made his first public appearance as Big 12 commissioner Wednesday to kick off the conference’s media days. His comments got a lot of coverage, particularly around his remark that the conference could potentially let Texas and Oklahoma leave for the SEC earlier than the summer of 2025 if they can reach an appropriate deal. But one day later, in a different story on Big 12 coordinator of officials Greg Burks’ singularly not clear remarks on how the conference will enforce “Horns Down” penalties going forward, an ESPN headline named Burks rather than Yormark (seen above at Big 12 Media Days Wednesday) as the conference commissioner. That can be seen in the screenshot below, which was taken more than three hours after the piece was initially published at 11:17 a.m. Eastern:
It’s also in the meta description of the piece:
And in the URL: https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/34242601/big-12-continue-enforce-horns-gesture-potential-penalty-says-commissioner-greg-burks.
Mistakes happen, including mixing up officials’ titles, and this certainly isn’t the first headline error we’ve seen. And the body of the piece referred to Burks (who has been the conference’s coordinator of officials since 2018) correctly. It’s just amusing that ESPN, which also happens to be one of the Big 12’s media partners (albeit one that’s received a cease-and-desist from them), is already running headlines referring to someone other than Yormark as “Big 12 commissioner” only a day after Yormark’s first public appearance in that role, and only weeks after he left Roc Nation to join the Big 12.
[ESPN; photo from Jerome Miron/USA Today Sports]
