KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe refers to conference realignment as “that elephant in the room.” At the Big 12 spring meetings Tuesday, the jokes stopped there.
“I’m worried every day what will happen,” Kansas athletic director Lew Perkins said. “This is serious, serious, serious stuff.”
How serious? The nerves among conference athletic directors seem similar to those in the locker room before any Big 12 championship football game. With the national conference landscape beginning to rumble, Beebe is frantically securing his constituents before his conference is altered forever.
The Big Ten, Southeastern and Pac-10 all have publicly stated they are looking to expand for more revenue. Colorado, Texas, Nebraska and Missouri have given every indication they will listen. That’s why Beebe is busy talking. The Big 12 is vulnerable, and Beebe knows it.
“Look, we’re the conference that has been together the least amount of time of any in the country,” he said. “We haven’t gone though one generation of fans and supporters and students who only know this conference as the place that their institution competes. So there’s some sense to an evaluation of whether this makes sense to institutions.
“I just want them to come to that conclusion pretty quickly.”
There is a time element in this. The Big 12’s Fox Sports-ESPN television contract runs out after the 2011-12 fiscal year, and Beebe will begin negotiations next April. Combined with the ABC-ESPN deal that runs through 2015-16, Big 12 schools last year received $7 million to $12 million each.
The Big Ten, strengthened by its powerful Big Ten Network, gave its schools $20 million to $22 million each, and the SEC gave $17 million. Beebe would like to know which Big 12 schools are with him when he meets with the suits from TV.
Nearly all Big 12 athletic directors declined comment Tuesday, but DeLoss Dodds of Texas, next to Notre Dame the biggest pawn in the realignment chess game, unabashedly said he will look around.
“If you’ve known me very long, I’m not hanging back to see what people are going to do,” Dodds said. “I’m going to know what our options are going to be. That’s not going to change.”
Beebe said part of his persuasion will be to project future revenues. The Atlantic Coast Conference helped last month when it signed a 12-year, $1.86 billion contract with ESPN, doubling the ACC’s football income.
In every area of comparison, the Big 12 is a more attractive football conference than the ACC. Beebe, however, isn’t just trying to entice members with TV dollars. He’s showing the negatives of joining proposed super conferences.
“It’s going to be a sad day and very difficult not to have a lot more intervention and legal issues attached to those institutions,” Beebe said. “Pressure will be immense for programs to be successful. There will be more churning of coaches, less chances of winning conference and national championships.”
Beebe said he has not received a phone call from Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany seeking permission to talk to Big 12 schools. The Big 12 does have a complicated exit fee. But whatever penalty Missouri would suffer, it could make up within two years of the Big Ten’s lucrative TV deal.
Donnie Duncan was Oklahoma’s AD when the Big Eight and Southwest Conference formed the Big 12, starting with the 1996-97 school year. Now a Big 12 consultant, he shares the concern.
“Where the concern comes from is that this conference was formed for the right reasons and those reasons still remain the same,” Duncan said. “But that was then and this is now. Environments change. Leadership changes.”
And that has athletic directors in the Big 12 looking warily at the AD next to them, admittedly a little nervous.
“The Big Ten has been in existence for 100 years,” Perkins said. “The Big 12, we’re teenagers. We’re just young kids. I want to grow up with my siblings.”
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
