Needing someone strong and savvy to mend the Big 12, the league has turned to a former Big Eight commissioner who also helped usher in the era of college football as big business.
Chuck Neinas, who is known across the college landscape as a smart consensus builder, will take over the Big 12 as interim commissioner on Oct. 3. The Big 12 dumped former commissioner Dan Beebe on Thursday in a mutual agreement after the conference nearly fell apart for the second time in 15 months.
The 79-year-old Neinas said he is going to the Big 12 to work, not just sit around until his successor is picked. He is not going to be considered a candidate for the permanent job.
"I am not a caretaker. My mission is to bring the conference closer together and move forward and make progress in all areas," Neinas told the Associated Press on Friday, adding he expects to be on the job six months or longer.
Neinas was Big Eight commissioner from 1971 to 1980. He left for the College Football Association, a confederation of schools that fought to take control of TV rights away from the NCAA. Oklahoma and Georgia had sued the NCAA over the issue, and federal courts ruled in favor of the schools, putting them in charge of negotiating television contracts that are now valued in the billions.
TV rights are also at the center of the Big 12's attempt to patch itself back together.
The nine remaining schools — Texas A&M is planning to leave in 2012 — have agreed in principle to give their TV rights to the conference for the next six years. That would essentially handcuff the schools to the Big 12 by making them leave behind their TV rights and money if they break away or are poached by another league.
No contracts have been signed, and the proposal needs approval of at least some school governing boards around the Big 12.
Beyond his business acumen, Neinas said it is his job to help mend hurt feelings in a league where he has many long relationships.
"I would like to see the same kind of atmosphere that we had in the Big Eight. It was family," Neinas said.
After the CFA disbanded, Neinas founded a consulting firm that helped many of the Big 12's biggest names land their jobs. His search firm helped Texas hire football coach Mack Brown and helped Oklahoma hire both football coach Bob Stoops and Athletic Director Joe Castiglione.
Neinas also hired current Texas Athletic Director DeLoss Dodds as an assistant commissioner in the Big Eight in 1977.
Steven Hatchell, who was the first Big 12 commissioner when the league was formed in 1996 and is now president of the National Football Foundation and College Football Hall of Fame, has known Neinas since 1971. He called him "ideal for what needs to be done."
"He's smart, intuitive and very experienced on these types of things," Hatchell said.
Former Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer said Neinas is "respected by everyone" and has the skills to bring the biggest and smallest programs in the league in line.
"I see all these games on television every Saturday and I think about this: They wouldn't be on television if it hadn't been for us and for Chuck Neinas and Georgia taking on Goliath (NCAA)," Switzer said.
"When I heard Beebe was leaving, Neinas was the first guy I thought of. He knows every athletic director in the country. He's the one who can rein in Texas, if it can be done."
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