MU Officials Ready for Thursday Realignment Agenda Item

COLUMBIA | Brady Deaton, the chancellor of the University of Missouri, and MU athletic director Mike Alden are headed to Kansas City this week for Thursday meetings of Big 12 Conference athletic directors and administrators.

The meeting will confront speculation over a possible drastic change to the conference structures of major intercollegiate athletics and see how far Dan Beebe, the Big 12 commissioner, is willing to push his "everybody-on-the-same-plane" ultimatum.

“We need to talk about where we’re going and who’s on the plane when it takes off,” Beebe said recently in an interview on Kansas City radio station WHB.

Some observers saw the remark as a direct shot at Missouri and Nebraska, schools that have admitted a willingness to listen if the Big Ten Conference shows them a better deal, and at Colorado, which is willing to listen if the Pacific 10 Conference comes up with the right expansion offer.

Alden told The Kansas City Star on Sunday — after Missouri’s softball team beat Oregon 7-2 and qualified for the second straight season for the College World Series in Oklahoma City this week — that conference expansion is on the agenda for Thursday at Big 12 Conference meetings in Kansas City.

Of Beebe’s salvo, Deaton said, “It continues the wild speculation.”

But with Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds having come out last week telling USA Today that Texas would consider all the possibilities amid talk of change in major conferences, are Beebe’s words anything more than a bluff in a high-stakes game of collegiate poker?

“Nothing’s off the table,” Dodds said.

Deaton and Alden were unwilling to publicly add fuel to what could be a confrontational atmosphere in Kansas City. Nor did either man back down on his stated intention of doing what is best for Missouri.

“It’s an incredible time nationally,” Deaton said. “Everybody is concerned about that. It will be a topic of discussion.“

Alden stressed that neither he nor Deaton had been confronted with anything official in the way of Beebe’s “on the plane" statement.

“We haven’t heard anything like that directly,” Alden said. “We haven’t taken that as an ultimatum as an institution.”

Alden and Deaton said they would be in Kansas City for the Thursday conference realignment discussions, but each man also hopes to make it to Oklahoma City for the MU softball team’s games in the College World Series.

Missouri will open play in that event on Thursday at noon, with a first-round game against Hawaii.