Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark made a lengthy appearance on “Canzano & Wilner: The Podcast” on Wednesday to discuss the league’s new media rights deal, the Pac-12, and a number of other topics.

During that interview, Yormark told John Canzano and Jon Wilner he is not “specifically” targeting Pac-12 schools in expansion and he has a “great” relationship with Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff.

The full interview can be found here.

Yormark and Kliavkoff have had a complicated relationship since the former Roc Nation CEO took over the Big 12.

There was the uneasiness of the summer, when USC and UCLA announced departures for the the Big Ten and the stability of the Pac-12 eroded. At Pac-12 Media Days before the 2022 football season, Kliavkoff accused Yormark and the Big 12 of lobbing “grenades” into the league to further destabilize things in a question-and-answer setting with some very palpable tension.

Then the Big 12 jumped the proverbial line in negotiating and securing its next media rights contract — something Kliavkoff and the Pac-12 are still trying to sort out themselves after months of discussion.

“I just want to kind of go on the record — no one is fighting. I have a great relationship with George,” Yormark said on the podcast. “We have a collegial relationship. I’ve known George for years. I believe in this industry that you can partner with all your colleagues for all the right reasons but at the same time know that from time to time you’re going to compete. And that’s the world we live in. That’s the world I came from.

“I look to partner with all of my colleagues in the Power Five as often as I can and when the opportunity exists, but there is going to be those moments when we compete. That’s just life. We’re not going after the Pac-12. The Pac-12’s not going after us. George and I have a good relationship. The media has turned it into something different.”

Since last summer, it has been reported the Big 12 has significant interest in adding Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah to its membership.

The Pac-12 released a statement on Monday that read, in part, the 10 remaining schools “remain highly confident” in the conference’s future and “united in our commitment to one another.”

It was no doubt a response to recent reporting that the Pac-12’s media rights negotiations aren’t going particularly well.

And with the Big 12 settling on an exit for OU and Texas, the threat of Big 12 poaching out west has seemingly grown.

Though Yormark would like the league to know he’s not targeting the Pac-12… just the footprint.

“I’m not targeting anyone specifically,” he said. “I’ve been pretty transparent and intentional that we’d like that fourth time zone to create more value for our media partners. … Would I like to be a national conference in all the different time zones and from a geography standpoint have our Big 12 flag all over the country? 100%.

“We’ll see where we end up.”