Big 12 meetings could yield big drama
Steven M. Sipple/Lincoln Journal Star
Nebraska athletic director Tom Osborne says he doesn’t really know what to expect at this week’s Big 12 meetings in Kansas City, Mo.
He’ll listen intently to league commissioner Dan Beebe.
“I’m sure he’ll have some things to say,” Osborne said. “We’ll probably get an officiating report on football and basketball. I imagine we may have some discussion as to how you start or stop the clock on an incomplete pass.”
Ouch. The meetings begin in earnest Tuesday and run through Friday at the InterContinental Hotel in the city’s Plaza district. It ought to be wicked fun, considering the potential for significant change in college athletics within the next year, and the Big 12’s prominent place in the discussion.
“I suppose at some point someone will address the issue of conference realignment,” Osborne said. “I don’t know how close to the vest people are going to keep their cards. I really don’t know how it’ll evolve. It could be fairly routine and insignificant. On the other hand, it could end up being a fairly dramatic discussion.”
Yes, drama is a distinct possibility. Beebe set the tone with his recent statement: “We need to talk about where we’re going (as a conference) and who’s on the plane when it takes off.” Without naming names, he obviously was referring to Nebraska and Missouri, because they’ve expressed a willingness to at least listen to the Big Ten if it calls with expansion plans.
Will Beebe hit Nebraska and Missouri with ultimatums? Colorado? Texas? It’s difficult to blame Beebe if he’s becoming a tad impatient. After all, he’s preparing for a round of TV negotiations next spring. There are bowl contracts to finalize. He wants to push the league forward. As it stands, the Big 12 is like a teenager in its awkward formative years, looking for greater stability in a period of anxiety.
“I want there to be a time — on our time schedule, not any other conference or entity’s schedule — where we say, ‘OK, here’s who’s committed to this conference, and we’re going forward and we’re going to prepare for our negotiations with television next spring, which looks like it’s going to be a highly profitable situation for us, whether we collaborate with the Pac-10 or do it on our own,” Beebe told The Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune last week.
For the Big 12 to remain formidable into the future, “We can’t be sitting there being perceived as being unstable or having members who might have there eyes on other places.”
Beebe reportedly will push for a deadline — perhaps before the start of the 2010-11 school year — for Big 12 schools to affirm their commitment to the league, strengthening his hard line with stiffer monetary penalties for schools that bolt. The Big 12 board of directors would have to approve.
So, there could be ample drama.
In that regard, I asked Osborne about Beebe’s on-the-plane-or-off comment.
“Well, I guess that’s his right,” Osborne said. “I can understand him wanting to do that. That’s really the only reaction I have.”
Is there an agenda Osborne will take to Kansas City?
“I doubt if I would put whatever message I have in the paper,” he said. “I really don’t have a particular agenda. I’ll certainly be interested in what people have to say. I’ll listen very carefully. I’m probably going to listen more than I’m going to do a great deal of speaking.”
Osborne probably should prepare to be disappointed about the site of the Big 12 football championship game. According to Nebraska chancellor Harvey Perlman, a member of the Big 12 board of directors, the board has authorized Beebe to begin negotiations with Cowboys Stadium on a three-year extension that would keep the game in Arlington, Texas, through 2013.
Osborne has made it clear he wants the game rotated annually, “but I don’t think many people are listening to my thoughts on it,” he said.
Meanwhile, Perlman expresses mixed emotions about the championship site. I share the chancellor’s sentiment. Cowboys Stadium is extremely impressive and should be used on a regular basis. That said, given the league’s divisional structure, it would be unfair to permanently anchor the title game in the South, as Osborne fears will become the case.
At any rate, Kansas City here we (the Big 12 media) come. We’ll keep our eyes and ears open for news. We won’t relent, not for a second. We all saw the importance of a mere second in last season’s league title game.
By the way, “I think that’s all been discussed with the appropriate people,” Osborne said. “We’ve received our answers, and nothing’s going to change.”
Granted, that particular result won’t change. As for the college landscape as we know it, well, we’ll see about that.
Well by now the Big 12 meetings have pretty much wrapped up and we still don't know what the state of the union is. Are Nebraska and Missouri any closer to leaving? Or staying? I'm sure there were at least a few thinly veiled references to the pair of schools leaving. Of course, there have been almost as many rumors about Colorado leaving for the Pac 10 or Texas jumping ship for the SEC - while those rumors are purely speculative, they're still out there. I did love Osborne's comments about the incomplete pass call. I'd at least like to see the rule that lets the replay official pretty much overide any other rule get changed. Of course if Nebraska joins the Big Ten it won't really matter anymore.
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