Mizzou sports special committee focused on a new era in college athletics.

Mizzou officials still cringe a bit when they hear the term “oversight commission,” though that moniker remains for the special committee the Board of Curators created in February 2024 to “obtain, monitor, and gather all information” deemed necessary to assess the athletic department’s spending and revenue. 

The first two weeks of February were tumultuous at Mizzou, a roller-coaster of highs and lows — and lingering questions — that was chronicled thusly: 

• February 5, then-Athletic Director Desiree Reed-Francois announced a record $62 million anonymous donation that would help offset the costs of a massive renovation project for 98-year-old Memorial Stadium. 
• February 8, the Board of Curators, meeting at the MU campus, established the MU Athletics Special Committee, naming four Curators to the group. 
• February 13, Reed-Francois announced her resignation with a flood of emotion as she revealed she was “going home” to Arizona to become the athletic director there. 

But that abbreviated chronicle certainly omits an even bigger picture that was then at the backdrop — and now at the forefront — of intercollegiate athletics. National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division 1 member schools may begin paying their athletes via a revenue distribution model starting in 2025. And Mizzou’s revenue-producing participation in the nation’s cream of the crop conference — the Southeastern Conference (SEC) — means an even higher payday for conference schools when a new television rights deal with ESPN begins in 2025. 

SEC schools received roughly $51 million each in the 2023-24 fiscal year. The additional media revenue will make that shared pot of cash that much sweeter. And it comes on the heels of the pay-for-play plan that has already been in place via name, image, and likeness (NIL) compensation deals that are putting cash in players’ pockets. 

Combined with the transfer portal where players can leave one school for another without having to sit out a year before playing, the era of college athletics free agency has already begun. The stakes are that high now and monitoring — or overseeing — athletic department funding is a basic fiduciary duty, curators have said. 

Reed-Francois was credited for making a significant impact on the Mizzou athletic department in her two and a half years at the helm — she hired men’s hoops coach Dennis Gates in 2022 and signed football coach Eli Drinkwitz to a hefty contract extension in December 2023. But there was also a mix of celebration and consternation. MU athletics produced record revenue in 2023; but it also had record spending, ending the year exactly one dollar in the black. 

Two and a half months after Reed-Francois departed for Arizona, MU hired Memphis Athletic Director Laird Veatch for that role at Mizzou. Veatch officially began that post on May 1. 

The Curators unanimously approved forming the four-member special committee, noting in a press release that its focus would range from finances to progress of athletic facilities renovations to name, image, likeness compensation, and the future of the NCAA. 

In May, as reported by ESPN, the NCAA and its five power conferences agreed to allow schools to directly pay players for the first time in the 100-plus-year history of college sports. The leagues and the NCAA announced a multibillion-dollar agreement to settle three pending federal antitrust cases. The NCAA will pay more than $2.7 billion in damages over 10 years to past and current athletes, sources said. 

Since that announcement, those conferences have confirmed a revenue-sharing plan for each school to share up to some $20 million per year with its athletes. Multiple media reports also point out that though the NCAA issued a joint announcement about the settlement, it only reluctantly agreed to do so as a matter of self-preservation. The Power 5 Conferences —the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), Big Ten Conference, Big 12 Conference, Pac-12 Conference, and SEC — may have the collective clout to leave the NCAA and become their own national organization 

(A valuable note for context: It’s more accurately called the Power 4 because the Pac-12 was essentially neutered in the past year with the defection of all but two universities.) 

That’s the background — and urgency — for the formation of Mizzou’s special athletic committee. 

“Particularly at this critical moment in the evolution of key programs and with major planned investments in MU Athletics imminent, accountability to the Board and the State through this new committee is more important than ever,” reads a curators meeting document making the case for the committee. The special committee includes Bob Blitz, the attorney who led St. Louis’ legal effort against the Rams, as chair, and Todd Graves, Robin Wenneker, and Jeff Layman. 

The committee description continued, “We are aware that the fundamental aspects of Collegiate Athletics are undergoing significant and ongoing changes. These include, but are not limited to, shifts in athlete acquisition and retention methods and costs, the changing landscape of coach salaries and mobility, as well as the rising expenses associated with maintaining, upgrading, and constructing facilities. These changes bring about various challenges with broader implications.” 

The new committee has the power to “obtain, monitor and gather all information the committee deems necessary to assess progress of athletic funding, efforts and results of funding.” 

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that in the 2023 fiscal year, which ended in June, the athletic department finished in the black by a single dollar, partially because of direct financial support in the form of a loan from the university. Mizzou athletics spent and generated record amounts that year, which ended before the 2023 football season and the record-setting donation for Memorial Stadium. 

The committee is also tasked with obtaining and monitoring “all information regarding the progress of the Memorial Stadium Project, any other athletic facilities or plans and the progress of the Huron Roadmap.” 

What The Charter Says 

• This special committee will be charged,
  but not limited to, the following: 
• To obtain, monitor, and gather all information the committee deems necessary to assess progress of athletic funding, efforts and results of funding. 
• To obtain, monitor and gather all information regarding the progress of the ($250 million) Memorial Stadium Project, any other athletic facilities or plans, and the progress of the Huron Roadmap. 
• To be advised of regularly or upon request of the committee on matters concerning NCAA, SEC or any legal matters pending or on the horizon regarding the foregoing and NIL, Title IX, taxable status of contributions or other matters that may affect Athletics at MU. 
• To do whatever is necessary to aid the committee in measuring, understanding and keeping current on any matters related to MU athletic activities that exist or what is foreseeable when it becomes foreseeable.

Huron is the consulting firm that the athletic department hired to identify areas where Mizzou could “further invest invest in athletics excellence,” according to a news release. The special athletic committee of curators was an outcome of the MU-Huron work. 

The committee’s third charge gets to the heart of the financial picture. The group will be updated “on matters concerning NCAA, SEC or any legal matters pending or on the horizon regarding the foregoing and NIL, Title IX, taxable status of contributions or other matters that may affect athletics at MU.” 

The committee also has the power to tackle other matters related to Mizzou athletics as it sees fit. 

The contract with Huron — a university press release referred to that as an “engagement” — cost $540,000 to provide “a full assessment of the current state of resources and infrastructure that support Mizzou Athletics, as well as outline a roadmap for how the Board can enhance its support.” 

The financial oversight has a sense of urgency if only because of the seismic shifts on the college athletics landscape. Curator Darryl Chatman noted in a news release that “college athletics has evolved rapidly in the last couple of years due to changes like Name, Image and Likeness, and conference expansion,” and that the work with Huron was expected “to build a roadmap for growth that capitalizes on the distinct strengths of Mizzou and propels us to the top of collegiate athletics.” 

Huron issued its report and recommendations in fall 2023. 

Blitz told the Post-Dispatch that a desire to lend heightened attention to finances and stay informed regarding the continued college sports landscape’s complexity were behind the decision. 

“With the statistics that we saw, we felt in filling our fiduciary duty that it was a must to step in and find out more about what was going on in the athletic department,” Blitz told the newspaper. “We’re not trying to pick coaches; we’re not trying to do those kind of things. We’re trying to make sure that the athletic department is running in a financially responsible way and doing the best they can, that they have the best methods to raise money.”

MU Oversight Committee