KANSAN.COM / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN WEDNESDAY, MAY 5. 2010 / SPORTS
3B
COLLEGE SPORTS
Rumors flying about Missouri's affiliation with the Big 10
MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE
COLUMBIA, Mo. — 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 10 Conference.
Eastman subscribes to a "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" theory. Contact has been made, if perhaps indirectly, between Missouri and the Big 10, 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 cor
rect 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, athletics 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 is 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.
and current radio analyst and special assistant to Alden who works in the Tiger Scholarship Fund office, sees it.
That's the way Gary Link, a former Missouri basketball player
"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. No matter what list you
consult.
Last week a TV report out of South Bend, Ind. cited an anonymous source out of St. Louis, 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 college football season.
This despite Big 10 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.
"We've heard the talk," Tiller said. "It's everywhere. The more talk you hear the more it is a consideration."
Senior basketball guard J.T. Tiller, meanwhile, said it would not surprise him at all.
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 10 country trusts the MU administration will do the right thing.
Missouri softball coach Ehren Earleywine is one of those who profess a preference for remaining in the Big 12.
"As long as Mizzou continues to grow, if moving to the Big 10 helps that notoriety, sure, go for it," Collins says. "If not, Mizzou athletics is still due for big things."
But Earlewley said, "it wouldn't surprise me" if MU wound up in the Big 10 sooner than later.
SOFTBALL (CONTINUED FROM 1B)
When she first arrived on campus, she said, the softball team had little participation in SAAC. She helped changed that, and this season the softball team won the Champs competition, a contest between all the KU teams to see who gets the most involved with SAAC.
To ensure that SAAC is left in good hands, Stanton helped recruit some of the freshmen to participate, including freshman pitcher and outfielder Alex Jones.
Jones said Stanton's love for her team had led to her success in the organization.
"She goes out of her way to put so much time into it," Jones said. "When she has her mind set on something she's going to get it done."
Edited by Megan Heacock
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