Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, whose tired face has become synonymous with conference realignment, announced yesterday he’s stepping away from the role he’s held since 2012 later this year. Bowlsby cited the chaos that ensued before and during the 2020 COVID-19 impacted season, as well as the fallout after the Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners opted to join the SEC, as his reasons for calling it a career relatively early.
“They knew that sometime in the next year or two I was going to look for an off-ramp, and so the more we talked about it, the more we got to the point where, yeah, maybe it makes sense to transition now and bring somebody in that has a little longer runway,” Bowlsby said of his decision to step away, according to ESPN.