By Jason Notte

Copyright adweek

The Big 12 celebrates its 30th anniversary as it enters college football season, but the conference and its creative partners at Translation acknowledge that its 2025 iteration is “A Different League.”

After dealing with the departures of longtime members Texas and Oklahoma in 2024 and the arrivals of Houston, Cincinnati, Brigham Young University, Utah, Arizona, Arizona State, and former member Colorado within the last two years, the Big 12 is finally settling in and getting fans acclimated to the new normal.

In a new ad for the conference’s “A Different League” campaign, directed by Thomas Van Kristen, the Big 12 and Translation use a soundtrack by UnitedMasters artists Leo Manzari and Cydnei Chyan to power a faceless football player with the XII logo on his chest, making plays with bursts of color before flipping through the helmets of all 16 conference schools.

“There’s no conference like the Big 12, so we built an identity no one else could claim,” said Beto Fernandez, CMO of Translation. “‘A Different League’ embraces the power of differences: Sixteen schools with unique identities, one united conference greater than the sum of its parts, the refreshed brand and Football anthem film capture the Big 12’s edge-of-your-seat energy and pride, displaying how our differences are the sparks that set us apart.”

But in the third year of the Big 12 and Translation’s partnership, the emphasis is less on the effects of conference realignment and more on Commissioner Brett Yormark’s vision of the conference as a nexus of sports, entertainment, and culture. The former Roc Nation and Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment executive stewarded a rebrand that brought in Endeavor’s WME Sports and IMG to use data analysis to build the Big 12’s presence in media, social, content, sponsorship, music, and entertainment—declaring the conference “open for business.”

Tyrel Kirkham, chief brand and business officer of The Big 12, sees the campaign as part of the conference’s efforts to seek both attention and cultural relevance at all levels of sports. It distinguishes the conference in the same way as Iowa State’s 24-21 regular-season football win over Kansas State at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium on Aug. 23.

It’s as helpful in boosting the conference’s profile as hosting its media days at the Dallas Cowboys’ The Star practice facility in Frisco, Texas, in July, with Microsoft Copilot’s AI-driven name, image, and likeness rights-supporting tools for players in tow. It creates as much of a distinction as the deal the conference entered with PayPal and Venmo in June to pay players directly as a result of the NCAA’s legal settlement earlier this summer.

With the Big 12 announcing this summer that it’s bringing WWE Smackdown to Big 12 markets this season through its partnership with Endeavor, bringing country star Jon Pardi to its football championship in December, and adding TNT Sports and CBS sublicenses to its ESPN and Fox broadcast deals, the latest campaign alludes to Yormark and Kirkham’s plans for an expanded Big 12 playing field.

“For us to have a commissioner at the helm that embraces those differences and allows us to celebrate them and continue to double down and triple down on the things that have really created a lot of awareness and buzz around our conference the past couple years is exciting as a brand builder,” Kirkham said. “As someone who’s now responsible for our commercial business as well—our broadcast, our licensing—to be able to put all those things together, to articulate to the world on a daily basis how we are a different league, is what gets me really excited in this next chapter.”

Spreading the offense

While in Dublin for the Iowa State-Kansas State game, Kirkham took the train each day from the home his family rented about 15 minutes outside the city. Hearing the murmur of fans excited about American football, and realizing it was going to bleed into an NFL game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Minnesota Vikings at Croke Park later this month, gave Kirkham a sense of the kind of reach and influence his conference could have.

Back near its home base in Dallas, meanwhile, the Big 12 hosted a screening party for fans at the Cosm sports and events venue, handed out rally towels, and offered photo ops with the conference’s championship trophy.

The game got underway at 9 a.m. Eastern on ESPN, but gave fans a preview of what they could expect from the conference’s expanded viewing options this season. The sublicensing agreement with TNT Sports, for example, provides a linear broadcast for games that would’ve ordinarily been reserved for ESPN+ streaming. Those broadcasts also get a studio show featuring former player analysts Champ Bailey, Takeo Spikes, and Victor Cruz and host Adam Lefkoe; additional content; and two documentary series on Bleacher Report.

“We understand what Bleacher Report means to culture and living at the intersection of culture and arts and fashion, much of the things that we’re leaning into,” Kirkham said, noting that Bleacher Report had Big 12 coaches, including Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy and Arizona State’s Kenny Dillingham, listen to players’ walk-up songs. “Being a part of that, it just shows we’re trying to shed light on some of these things that are part of normal pop culture that we could infuse into our narrative and not only service those who are part of our ecosystem, but bring new audiences into the fold.”