KANSAS CITY, Mo. — When Lew Perkins was athletic director at Connecticut, he walked into the annual Big East meetings about 10 years ago amid a swirl of conference realignment talk.
Boston College, Miami and Virginia Tech were getting sweet-talked by the Atlantic Coast Conference. So the Big East asked those schools for affirmation that they would stay where they are.
Which those schools did — on that day.
“Three days later," Perkins said, “it was not what they told me."
And Boston College, Miami and Virginia Tech were gone.
Now, Perkins is A.D. at Kansas. And he spent Tuesday at the Big 12 meetings amid a swirl of talk about Nebraska, Missouri, Texas and Colorado being potential expansion targets.
So can anyone believe anything that's said the next three days about the Big 12 staying together?
Perkins, with 42 years in the athletic management business, hopes so. But he's worried.
“The most important thing for the University of Kansas and for college athletics is expansion," he said. “That's it.
“If I said I wasn't worried, I'd be a fool. I am worried every day — not only about Kansas and the Big 12, but for the Pac-10, the Big Ten. ... This is serious, serious, serious stuff."
Thank you, Lew, for someone finally saying this out loud. We all know this is true. It's refreshing to hear it plainly addressed.
When asked about KU's positioning for the future, Perkins said: “I am concerned."
He added that Big 12 Commissioner Dan Beebe, Nebraska A.D. Tom Osborne, Texas A.D. DeLoss Dodds and Missouri A.D. Mike Alden are spending “all their time" on this.
“And they should," Perkins said, “because that is the most important thing."
Doubling the worry for Kansas is that Perkins has been distracted recently by two major events on his own campus — a $1 million ticket-scalping scandal and a case of alleged blackmail against him by a former KU athletic department employee.
Law enforcement and legal authorities have ordered Perkins not to discuss the blackmail case, which involves a free loan of more than $15,000 of exercise equipment to Perkins.
“Believe me, I'd like to get a lot of things off my chest," he said. “But I can't talk about it.
“If you use some decent and logical thought, you can figure out what this is all about. I'm the victim. I've turned everything over to the police department."
All the time Perkins has spent doing that is time not spent on helping to map Kansas' future.
“I've got to get refocused," he said.
As much as Perkins has been taken off-task, he had the presence of mind to answer one final question Tuesday with another.
When asked if Kansas would listen if the Big Ten called, he replied: “How do you know they haven't called us?"
Contact the writer:
444-1024, lee.barfknecht@owh.com
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