http://www.kansascity.com/2010/05/04...he-center.html
Mizzou living large at the center of Big Ten expansion talk
By MIKE DeARMOND
The Kansas City Star
COLUMBIA | Stuart Eastman — a Missouri fan and booster known on one Internet site as Tiger Stu — doesn’t buy the notion that MU officials are just sitting on the sidelines, waiting to be contacted by the Big Ten Conference.
Eastman subscribes to a “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” theory.
Contact
has been made, if perhaps indirectly, between Missouri and the Big Ten, which seems poised — through expansion by as many as five teams — to change the face of big-time college athletics.
“Oh sure,” Eastman said. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. It’s not like all of a sudden this is going to take place.
“We’ve been talked to. It’s happened.
“And we’re being politically correct and not saying a word because that’s probably the best thing we can do.”
Never mind that within minutes of Eastman offering up that opinion at an athletic banquet Monday night at Mizzou Arena, MU athletic director Mike Alden once again did the politically correct thing.
“We maintain what our position has been all along,” Alden said. “We’re members of the Big 12 Conference. We don’t get involved in that speculation. We’re trying to make Missouri better every day.”
Welcome to life
inside the bubble.
Columbia — home to the 20-sport athletic program of the Missouri Tigers and the flagship campus of the University of Missouri system — is the focus of increasing attention of the best kind.
That’s the way Gary Link, a former Missouri basketball player and current radio analyst and special assistant to Alden who works in the Tiger Scholarship Fund office, sees it.
“The speculation’s great,” Link said. “Anytime they’re talking about you about something like that, it’s fantastic.”
Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Rutgers — lately Nebraska — and Missouri are high on the list of possible Big Ten additions.
Last week a TV report out of South Bend, Ind. — citing an anonymous St. Louis source — had Missouri all but signed and sealed as a new member of the Big Ten.
A day before, KOMU-TV in Columbia reported that Mizzou to the Big Ten was a “done deal” until taking down the initial story.
This week, Nebraska chancellor Harvey Perlman told the Omaha World-Herald that he anticipated expansion in some form by late summer. On Monday, Link told The Star that expansion could come before the start of this football season.
This despite Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany reiterating recently the league’s intent on keeping to a 12- to 18-month investigative timeline, with the clock only having begun to tick in the middle of last December.
The effect of this speculative swirl on Missouri athletes and coaches is disparate.
“It would surprise me a lot,” said freshman basketball guard Michael Dixon when asked whether he anticipated an announcement by Missouri as early as September.
Senior basketball guard J.T. Tiller, meanwhile, said it would not surprise him at all.
“We’ve heard the talk,” Tiller said. “It’s everywhere. The more talk you hear the more it is a consideration.”
Kim English, a sophomore MU basketball player, said: “I wouldn’t be surprised. I love the Big 12. But I’m just ready to play winning basketball, anywhere. I don’t really care where.”
Michelle Collins, a senior on Missouri’s Big 12 champion soccer team — from Naperville, Ill., in the heart of Big Ten country — trusts the MU administration will do the right thing.
“As long as Mizzou continues to grow, if moving to the Big Ten helps that notoriety, sure, go for it,” Collins said. “If not, Mizzou athletics is still due for big things.”
MU softball coach Ehren Earleywine is one of those who profess a preference for remaining in the Big 12. But Earleywine said, “it wouldn’t surprise me” if MU wound up in the Big Ten sooner than later.
“I was just talking to my wife about that,” he said. “I think the talks are getting heated up. At the end of the day, the money is going to do the ultimate talking. It’s going to make the decision. And I think there’s a lot of money to be gained.”
One of the most-often-cited examples is that out of the Big 12’s revenue sharing plan for football, Missouri gained $12 million at the last split, while the average payout for the 11 Big Ten teams was more than $21 million.
There is still residual resentment at Missouri over the Big 12 allowing the Tigers to be passed over in several recent bowl placements by league teams the Tigers had beaten, particularly a BCS spot in the Orange Bowl that went to Kansas while Missouri went to the Cotton Bowl.
But the specifics of why Missouri would be a good fit in the Big Ten are not what is in the air as the 2009-10 school year winds down. Will the Big Ten will extend an invitation that so many contend now will be readily accepted, or is it possible that Missouri might remain in the Big 12?
“Honestly, at this point, nothing would surprise me,” said Wayne Kreklow, who along with his wife, Susan, coaches MU volleyball and is the father of incoming freshman basketball player Ricky Kreklow.
“There have been so many rumors and stories circulating around. You’ve got all the big conferences positioning for all the what-ifs.
“We’re kind of on the sidelines, waiting to see when we’re sent into the game, and when we are, who we’re playing for.”