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BIG 12 CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYS

July 27, 2010

Dan Beebe

DALLAS, TEXAS

PETER IRWIN: At this time we're at the podium with the Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe.
Dan, it's your show. Do what you like.
DAN BEEBE: Okay. Well, after a slow start to the summer, it's great to be on the cusp of another exciting Big 12 football season. You know, I look forward to a terrific year as usual in the Big 12.
I think, as you've talked to our coaches and student athletes, you know the level of competition we provide each and every year, and I think it's only going to get better this year.
You know, I certainly understand there will be questions about the past and about the future, and I'm willing to entertain those. I think that, as I've said already in a number of publications and in media circuits, there's a great deal of excitement about the future of the Big 12 as we go forward, even after this year.
At the same time, there's a terrific level of disappointment about the departure of two very, very quality institutions with tremendous leaders in place at those institutions that I've enjoyed personally working with and regret that I won't get to do that after this year.
So I'm happy at this point to answer any of the questions that you have, and we'll continue on until Peter says stop it, that's enough.

Q. Dan, you said yesterday that you never felt like the league has been stronger than it is right now. What can you do to keep this from happening in the future and keep everyone happy?
DAN BEEBE: Well, I think there are a number of items that we have to take care of. One is we have to have continued great communication between the institutions, air out the difficulties and concerns that happen in all affiliations, all associations within our private confines, not in the public airing, and do things to address the issues with each other.
I think what we went through is like any kind of exploration of relationships as to whether you want to continue or not continue. There was full and considered judgment by a number of our institutions about what they were going to do, where their future was, and fortunately, ten members decided that the best situation for them was to continue together.
I think, after that kind of exploration, there's a renewed sense of commitment. There's a renewed sense of belonging, and a greater appreciation for each other. I have been very pleasantly -- not surprised, I would say, but at least informed by our members in a very short period of time how much consideration there is for each other.
And I think that's a natural, evolving process that occurs after such a challenging time as they've gone through and such a full exploration of what the potential was of other situations.

Q. When Nebraska and Colorado leaves, do you have a timetable as to when you'll explore, if you're going to explore, changing the name of the Big 12 Conference? It's only ten teams.
DAN BEEBE: Yeah, I'm in communication with commissioner Jim Delany now about a swap. Actually -- that was a joke.
I'm actually going to probably spend the next several months, eight to nine months, prior to our next year when we have ten members fully exploring what we want to do in that regard, engaging outside experts to survey the media, the institutions, the fans, the citizens of this part of the country, nationally, what can we cull this behind? What kind of message?
It may be our brand is significant enough that we don't want to change it. I've heard of conferences that have not had the exact numbers they have in their names actually be representing their membership. We'll take a look. I don't know.
I think we need to look at not just whether we change our name or our brand, what are the messages we want to convey going forward? We'll engage in a process to do that, and hopefully in the spring, early summer next year, we'll have a better idea of what we want to do going forward. That's a good question.

Q. Commissioner, do you think you like the idea of the ten-team conference round-robin and championships decided on the field, or will you actively engage in expansion and get other teams in the conference and reemerge as the Big 12 Conference in the end?
DAN BEEBE: One of the things that was rewarding going through this, first of all, we worked very, very hard to keep 12 members together. You all have seen that now, the top-secret white paper that I put out trying to make the case for the Big 12, and that was aimed at every institution, including the ones that departed.
But one of the things that was rewarding and satisfying after we got through this, when we had the ten that decided to remain together, there became a lot of enthusiasm and excitement about having ten members, having the type of cohesion and familiarity you get with playing everybody every year in football, you know, playing everybody twice a year in basketball.
The kind of collegiality and cementing of the relationships that I think that can bring was something that I think our folks realized. And there's absolutely no interest at this point in time in looking to expand our membership.
If an institution in this region of the country that could bring great value, more value than what we would have to provide to them was to step up and want to be a part of us, then maybe we'd have to look at it. But right now there's no affirmative interest by our members in expanding whatsoever.
There's so much excitement about continuing with the round-robin in football, seeing each other every year, and the double round-robin in basketball and other sports, that I think that's going to carry the day for the foreseeable future.

Q. Dan, when you say that there's no interest with the other ten members, is that mostly financial in not wanting to slice the pie any thinner?
DAN BEEBE: No, it's related to what I was talking about. Really it hasn't come up as much with them as with me. It's related to exactly what I'm talking about, being able to play each other, see each other every year in football, twice a year in basketball.
It's not a secret that there's an a consternation about not having a championship game in our conference, in football. The coaches have in the past unanimously and then at least overwhelmingly not been favorable towards it, and some of our institutions have reluctantly agreed to have the championship game.
It's been a case where we play in the national championship more than any other conference, but we've also had a couple of occasions when we could have played in it an additional time and had the team that was headed for the national championship get beat in our championship game and not have that access to the national championship.
So the reasons aren't related to that as much as just other benefits that people kind of came to realize once we were looking at having a ten-member conference rather than a 12-member conference.

Q. What does that do with not having a conference game with the networks? How do you appease them without the revenue that that game usually generated? And for that matter, the rest of the league with the revenue that that game generated?
DAN BEEBE: That's a good question. Fortunately, through this process, our longstanding and terrific partner, ABC/ESPN, has agreed to hold level our rights fees even without a championship game. In part that's going to be because we can provide them with nine football games for every school instead of eight, giving them a quality conference game per institution. And we'll also look into scheduling into that first weekend of December maybe more than one game.
We've had the championship game. It's obviously a high profile. But we may be able to produce two or three great games in that last weekend when they could have that for programming.
The other thing that was interesting was the double round-robin in basketball. We're the number one ranked basketball conference in the country last year. I don't see any reason why we can't continue to be one of the top two or three in the country for years and years to come. And have the teams play a double round-robin and more high quality games was another aspect to it.

Q. Dan, wouldn't it behoove you to quietly be proactive in looking at possible teams in case a year or two from now that someone might try to raid your league again?
DAN BEEBE: Well, of course, I'm paid to be proactive, and even though some of you thought that I wasn't during this process, internally we were very proactive. We got great information that was produced by outside consultants on a number of programs in case we had to repopulate the conference or if there was interest in expansion.
I didn't sit there and just bury my head about expansion. I reviewed it with our members, even before we lost members. Should we expand? Should we grow?
Through the process, I think what we decided or determined is that, you know, 12 is the highest level you want to have and have a conference. I think you get beyond 12, you really don't have a conference anymore. You have an association. You don't even see those programs on the other side very often. So how are you put together? How are you cementing those relationships?
That was the conclusion we had. Obviously, other conferences had other conclusion, and that's fine. But we're prepared and ready for any eventuality that comes up on us, and I'm not going to share all that with you, but you'll just have to trust me that we did a lot of work from the time this all started, you know, eight, nine months ago, to look at all of our options, all of the ability that we had to put together whatever we want.
Now, all of us commissioners serve at the pleasure of our members. I think those of you that know me know that I'm not a shrinking violet. I certainly voice my opinions. I'm strong about those opinions. But at the end of the day, it's my members who decide what direction they want to go.
And it's the same with the commissioners of the other conferences. No plan to expand, no plan to do other things aren't going to be done without full agreement of the membership.
And so my view is aligned with our members. We're in a great place. It's interesting, you know, we kind of were innovators coming on the scene with 12 members and having a championship game along with the SEC at about the same time. Now the rest of them have gone to 12, and we're going to 10 and doing it the old-fashioned way. Maybe it should be the Old-Fashioned Conference. I don't know.

Q. Dan, do you sense any support from some of the ten members remaining that should increase the exit penalties, you know, for the next school that might want to leave?
DAN BEEBE: That's something we'll discuss fully at the board level. At the time when we came into our June meetings and we had -- somebody said something about being on the airplane and figuring out who's on and who's off, there was a level of commitment that was comfortable for the board and they all agreed was for each institution that was committed to the long-term future of the conference to state so publicly and unequivocally, and that was satisfying to the board. We have withdrawal fees that are significant.
But I think I will bring to the board later this year whether we should review having more stringent fees or whether what we have is sufficient. We'll enter into -- these contract agreements for television are 12, 15, 25 years in duration. I think, when we get into that kind of situation, that's going to be something that also cements the conference in a better fashion as well.
So right now, I think, with the current membership of the board, there's a high level of trust. Even among all of them, the departing members, everyone agreed, yes, we'll come out of this meeting -- this was in June, 3 or 4 -- and we'll all explore what we wanted to do with our options and be able to commit to each other.
There's a high level of trust in that. There continues to be a high level of trust, if not even higher, but I think it is appropriate that we review what kind of provisions we have and whether we want more stringent rules, and we'll see how that goes.

Q. Dan, what can you tell us about the scheduling for the exit of Colorado, since nothing's been announced, whether it be 2011 or 2012? Where do we stand on that?
DAN BEEBE: Well, we're in discussions right now about transition issues, and we're going to be in those more prominently as we go forward. Those will be private discussions. I know it's Colorado's interest to try to move on along with Utah into the Pac-10. It's our interest to move on. I don't think it helps anybody to linger in a lame duck status, if you're on their side or our side.
We've got to make sure we're in concert with what we believe are the transition issues that we have to carry on with going forward. We're going to address that in very short fashion, and probably in early fall be able to conclude what we're going to do.

Q. Dan, a lot of talk about some schools, Texas and Oklahoma primarily, starting their own networks. Does the formation of those networks hurt the value of the conference packages, television contracts? And, if so, is that just the cost of doing business?
DAN BEEBE: Well, certainly, as we've explored what our options are, even prior to me becoming commissioner, we had a very careful exploration about whether we wanted to have our own network.
A network requires -- a conference network requires all rights to be contributed to the conference, and a lot of them would be warehoused, and that's something that our institutions -- some of our institutions that are in very -- that have a high market value or have also a lot of fan interest in all their sports, they'll want to do.
It's something that I think the SEC looked at carefully in terms of contributing all their rights, and they've had a history more like ours than the Big Ten's, where they've exploited those rights on their campus levels. Kentucky has had basketball games that they've used. Florida has had basketball and football that they've used somewhat. I think we're going to be in that similar position.
So you've got to look at the whole. I think, as I look forward to how product is being -- content is be distributed, there's no limit to what campuses can do with the distribution of their content in the future to reach out to their fans that may be worldwide. So I think all of our institutions should look at that earnestly.
I think, in the long run, we'll be in a position where we're compensated totally every bit as well as any other group of institutions.
We're hampered -- and I've said this a number of times -- by our staggered rights situations that looked like, at the time, prior to getting this position, were good things to do. Now I think they're more difficult. But in the long run and, you know, over the life of these contracts that other conferences are doing, we're going to be in a very favorable situation and be able to provide sports programming that would have otherwise sat on a shelf to the institutions to exploit if there's value in them doing that.

Q. Do you have any influence on when Texas and Oklahoma play annually?
DAN BEEBE: When they play? You mean what time of the year?

Q. Possibly moving that from October to December. Would you have any influence on that?
DAN BEEBE: Well, I think the major consideration is to keep the traditions of the conference as well as we can, and the tradition of that game has been around the state fair of Texas. And I don't see that really being something that we would want to mess with. It's just too important to those institutions, this region, and so forth.
So unless they decide to do something differently, we're going to plan to continue to try to keep those traditions. Just like the Texas and Texas A&M tradition has been moved back to Thanksgiving day.
You know, I don't think we can foreclose anything. Institutions may change their minds, but I think that we're looking at continuing what we've had traditionally in a lot of those relationships.

Q. How do you guys deal with the perception that this league did take a hit to their reputation a little bit this summer with the loss of those teams? And then just the fluidness of what could have happened to this conference. How do you guys combat that?
DAN BEEBE: Part of that's up here talking to you and expressing to you what's been expressed in our membership, and I think you've seen publicly, is the excitement and the collegiality and the respect for each other going forward.
You know, I don't think -- I can say this over and over and over again, and I still see many of you writing statements about not believing that and this isn't really going to hold together. Other than just sitting here telling you that and you observing others in our league saying that, you're going to have to see it happen over time.
Again, what I have said is that I don't think, in the course of human affairs, that you go through this type of very careful exploration of your future and perhaps consider going to other places and then conclude you're going to be together and then turn around and do it again in 24 months.
I think there's just so much time, energy, effort, even some difficulty, that that doesn't lend itself to just quickly doing it again.
These decisions were made for the long term, and people who expressed the decisions in the decision-making authority position said that, and they said it to all of you. They said it to us. They said it to each other.
So I'm not sure what else we need to do. I guess we could get all the athletics directors and board members up here and sing Kumbaya, and maybe that would help some of you. I'm not sure that's going to happen until we just observe it for a few years. We'll have to see how it goes.

Q. Commissioner, what is your thoughts on a resolution to the exit fees that Nebraska and Colorado will eventually pay? I know that Nebraska still feels that they don't owe anything. What do you think of that, and when will that ever be resolved?
DAN BEEBE: Like I stated, we're going to get to that discussion at a high level very, very soon. It will be resolved fairly quickly. We have by-laws that address it, that all of the members when the conference was formed agreed to, in the form of liquidated damages or withdrawal fees for those institutions that may depart, and we'll have full discussion about the meaning of those by-laws and whether there's any type of consideration for different application than what is written specifically in our constitution and handbook.

Q. Dan, I wonder if you could tell us what you think everybody avoided by the Big 12 staying together? What I mean is the 16-team super conferences all across the nation really changing the landscape of college sports, but specifically college football as we know it. Have people come to you and said you've saved college football?
DAN BEEBE: Well, it's not just related to football. Football may have been one of the more least affected sports because of the one-day-a-week competition, but still even football would have probably been affected negatively with returning the long-distance games and what that would mean.
You know, of course I'm going to be in a position of being prejudice by thinking that 16-member conferences were not of benefit to college sports. We're dealing with student-athletes. We're dealing with fans who, I think, by the way I feel about it, you guys write about it a lot, are much more interested in the geographic rivalries than they are in a national situation like a one-sport professional league like the NFL or NBA, where you're just moving professional millionaires from place to place, major city to major city.
And I think that we would have been doing a big disservice to the citizens in this part of the country if we would have -- if the major institutions in this part of the country departed to be part of mega conferences in other parts of the country.
Some of you have heard from our coaches who talked about parents who were concerned about all of this because they're college-age kids, they haven't completely departed the feeling of being part of the family, and these people want to go follow their kids. They want to be a part of going to the college game day experience on different campuses, and I think it would have created great hardship in doing that.
Again, as I alluded to earlier, I think you get away from being a conference if you get beyond 12 members. You really get into an association. It's harder to govern. The competition, you're not going to be as familiar as those members. In a 16-member conference, you're only going to see those other teams from other conferences at your home once every eight years. That's a long time. That doesn't build much cohesion in my judgment. And then you've got all the other sports and the return travel, particularly if you're in different time zones and other things.
So being located in a reasonable geographic region, I think, is important for the welfare of the student-athlete, the fans, and the cementing of those institutions with relationships.

Q. When do you sort of sit down with TV networks and how confident are you that you will reach a number that you hope for when you sit down again?
DAN BEEBE: We can talk to our current partners immediately. We're under contract. We have negotiating windows. Our first negotiating window by contract is with Fox, our cable rights holder for football and Olympic sports, women's basketball, in April of '11.
We're talking with them about whether we would consider doing something in advance of that. We'll have to see. One of the things is we fully expect to continue with the partners we've been with since the beginning.
But a happy occurrence of what's going on now is there's a lot more competitors in the marketplace. Fox was a primary bidder for the ACC property. That resulted in a lot higher rights fees than some people anticipated. Obviously, Turner has entered the college landscape in a significant way with the men's basketball tournament. You've got NBC and Comcast that have joined together and are awaiting SEC approval. ESPN is always a player. Fox wants to be more involved in their bidding for the ACC.
We've had great indications by professionals that I've brought into the picture to indicate that we're going to be in a solid situation in the future. We can't ever predict whether there's going to be another huge economic downturn or whether there's going to be changes in companies' philosophies and all that, but based on the information that we had and based on everything we've seen to this point, we're in a great situation.
You know, it's very encouraging to see Fox want to get so much more involved in a lot of the college space, and I think we're going to be benefited by that. They've been a terrific partner so far.

Q. How much would you pay for that Kumbaya video if you were trying to sell it on the open market? Realistically, are your TV networks and partners worried, by going to a round-robin schedule and adding a conference game, that the teams would not be as interested in having attractive intersectional contests on the TV?
DAN BEEBE: I think that's always going to be a concern, but I think the way I've seen our institutions' schedule, I haven't heard them say they're going to do something differently than what they're doing.
Oklahoma is obviously scheduling some very different nonconference foes out into the future. Texas has the same. They've got UCLA. They've got others that are on their slate. Iowa State is always going to play Iowa. That's always going to be a difficult game and a challenging game.
And I think more and more of our institutions are looking at that as what they need to do. Now, you're going to be at risk if you don't schedule quality nonconference games and you're one of the institutions that win this league and go into the national picture, you may not have a high enough profile, or high enough ratings to get into the national championship. So if you choose to do that, you choose at your own peril to do it.
But that hasn't been expressed to us. I think the overwhelming feeling is now at least they're guaranteed a slate of games, nine conference games that are meaningful, because when you line up in the conference week after week, it's a pretty good challenge no matter who you're playing, and that may override some of the concerns about whether that game is going to be replaced by not having a good conference game.
I think our folks are of the scheduling philosophy that's one that's going to continue to have some good nonconference foes on the ledger.

Q. Dan, the realignment talks seem to quiet playoff talk at least for a while. Whenever that conversation starts again, does it sort of pick up where it left off, or does the way that all this shook out change that conference at all?
DAN BEEBE: No, I don't think so. You've heard me say several times what a strong proponent I am of the bowl system and how I'm not for a playoff in really any form or fashion.
I was a part of playoff football for almost 14 years, served on the selection committee for I-AA football playoffs, and it was ironic that all of us commissioners at that level were willing to trade that experience for our programs and our student-athletes for a bowl game in a second if any market would have wanted us. We just didn't have the value.
So I'm not a believer in it. Others may raise it from time to time. I think we're in a great situation with bowls and the experiences those provide to the student-athletes as a reward for great regular seasons or even seasons where their programs are building.
Iowa State players, if you talk to them, I think they'd tell you it was an unbelievable experience to be treated by the great people of the Fiesta Bowl and Insight Bowls, Fiesta Bowl organization, which runs the Insight Bowl, and the Insight Bowl hospitality when they were in that bowl game last year. That's something that I want to see continue.
People say, well, basketball you have a lower number. Every one of our basketball programs plays in postseason and some play in two postseasons because they get our tournament, our experience, our excitement, and they can go on many of them to play in the postseason in the NCAA.
So it's not out of proportion that we have so many bowl games because it gives a great opportunity for a lot of young men to have a tremendous experience in postseason, and I'm all for that.

Q. Dan, obviously, you're optimistic about the future of the league as ten teams going forward, but if you had to list what your biggest concern was or what you wanted to achieve going forward beyond just doing the -- tidying up the loose ends on the exit of Nebraska and Colorado, what would that be?
DAN BEEBE: Well, I think the continued great spirit that is occurring with these ten institutions is something we want to make sure that we create the environment for that to go forward, and I have every anticipation that it will do so.
Some of the things, we can't fully anticipate what we're going to see. We've already talked about the television agreements. I'll be a lot more satisfied when we get those solidified and nailed down for the future.
And so I'm anxious to get into the spring and be able to negotiate that with Fox, if not sooner, get into the marketplace and see what we -- see what we have identified as our value and what we've had verified as our value is what we're going to be able to hold.
So as we do that, it's not just the money part of it, it's the exposure part. I mean, it's interesting how this has evolved. When football was thought to be, if you put it too much on TV, it would drive fans away. Really what's happened is the opposite. Ever since the -- even since the NCAA's television plan was ruled a violation of antitrust and everybody was on their own, the whole idea was, well, gosh, the more games you put on, the more you're not going to have fans come to the stadiums. Well, that's turned out not to be the case.
So we need to catch up with others who have all of their games exposed. We're going to have that in our next agreement. So that will be something that I'm working hard at.
Part of what we talked about here about the branding and what we coalesce behind, and I'm very interested to see what people perceive us as being and what we perceive ourselves to be, and how we're going to promote that as we go forward. I think that's going to be a huge endeavor as we go forward.

Q. How do you respond to the idea that you may face some difficulty if the revenue sharing isn't equal among the institutions? Do you just think that the brightness of the conference's future, it's so bright that that will just not be an issue going forward, that everybody will be happy? Or are the seeds of troubles lying ahead, have they been sown with the deal that it took to keep this conference together?
DAN BEEBE: Well, certainly that is something that not everybody agrees to, and it's been stated that way. But the fact of the matter is that everybody understands it, and they agreed to go forward with it the way it is. There's a high level of understanding of how the conference had to be put together in order to accommodate institutions that had options 15 years ago.
And the fact is, like some of the accounts directors who were on the side of really being adamant about changing it have said they now understand it's not discriminatory. It's based upon your appearances, your market value. You need to do better in the program, and you get a chance to achieve like everybody else.
And I think that it rewards -- there's a balance between providing a base that's distributed for everybody based on the market values of the programs that may be doing well at the time, and also the ability to do the good old American way of distributing some of it based upon your value.
You know, many of you work in organizations where some of you achieved a higher level in your media organization, you're columnists or you're in drive time or you're in major time. You know, one of the things that I thought was humorous was when one of the radio folks was saying, well, this is so unfair and everything. One of my neighbors who lives near -- who doesn't feel this way said, you know, that's interesting. Why don't you take all the money from your radio station and share it equally with all the disk jockeys no matter what time they've achieved, and that was abhorrent to him.
We live in a society where there's rewards for partners in law firms or architecture firms and so forth bringing in some of the money that others don't, and you get rewarded accordingly. It's kind of the American way.
Frankly, what was kind of ironic about this is one of the conferences that posed the most risk of taking most of our members share money -- share their revenue even more disproportionately than we do.
So it's something that deserved full exploration. There was certainly some angst about it. I think that there is a much higher level of recognition and appreciation for where we are and the appropriateness of where we are and the fact that what we have is not discriminatory and that everybody has a chance to achieve very high level of success in this conference.

Q. Again, the 12 schools, I think there's a 75 percent vote need for major change in policy or revenue, whatever. Is it going to stay 75 percent with 10 teams, or will you change that number?
DAN BEEBE: Actually, it was an exact number of nine, so we'll have to look at that. I don't think it was a 75 percent. Those are part of the transition issues that I've talked about we have to look at. How are we going to be constructed going forward with mundane things like how we govern ourselves, which can turn out to be applied to issues that aren't mundane. And part of it is looking at our whole by-law structure and what we need to do to adjust now that we're at ten members because everything was constructed along a 12-member line.

Q. When will you decide on a championship game, and has there been a set determination on how much bigger, for lack of a better word, bigger slice of the pie Texas is going to get?
DAN BEEBE: First of all, the championship game, you know, I think the predominant feeling is it probably will not be that we have a football championship game, but that will probably be finally decided in the fall, in the early fall.
And as far as -- there's been no change to our -- I think this is -- I'm glad you raised this because there's been a lot of misinformation. One of the biggest concerns I had about going through this process is how much misinformation there was. I think there's such a leap to get to the airwaves or the Internet that it was, frankly, somewhat disappointing about how little attention was given to whether something was true or not.
One of the things is we have not changed our revenue distribution formula whatsoever. So whatever institutions at any level in our conference were able to achieve before, they still have the same ability. There's no different -- nobody got more money.
The only thing was that situation we discussed where five institutions that were looking at having to either repopulate the conference or look at other options looked carefully the at our revenue projections for the future -- and they're just projections -- and said, you know what, let's not allow the three institutions -- give the three institutions being recruited by the most conferences -- Oklahoma, Texas A&M, and Texas -- an ability to not have to go just because of money.
So they all said, look, we think you're going to achieve $20 million a year in total revenue distribution. Another big misnomer is all television. Total revenue distribution in 2012-'13. So we're going to make a calculated judgment that we're not going to have to worry about it, but we will guarantee you that you won't be lower than that in '12-'13.
Those five institutions may have been in significantly different places in their own revenue had any of those three schools left, quite frankly. It would have devalued the conference enough that it would have been harmful to all of them.
You've heard a couple of institutions say that's a kind, generous, thoughtful offer, but it's not something we want to take advantage of. So we'll have to see going forward. The board hasn't treated that offer, hasn't been finalized. It's something that's been a good faith offer that was in the course of a very heated, difficult, and scary time for some of the institutions about what was going to remain for them if we didn't continue.
PETER IRWIN: Commissioner, I think you've answered all their questions. Thank you very much.

End of FastScripts

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