Kansas AD Lew Perkins Clarifies (Kind Of) Big 12 Buyout Money

Kansas AD Lew Perkins had a press conference on Wednesday and cleared the air on some of the reports out there about the Colorado and Nebraska buyout money.

Perkins did say that the five schools -- Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Iowa State and Baylor -- got together and said that Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahoma were guaranteed a specific amount of money at the end of the year. If they didn't hit that specific number, Perkins said the conference would subsidize them to hit that dollar amount.

If those three schools hit that number, the other schools wouldn't give up any money. If they didn't hit that number, then money would be pulled from somewhere to make up the difference.

Missouri AD Mike Alden said on Tuesday that he hadn't heard of that plan. Maybe this is splitting hairs but Perkins did say Missouri was involved in those talks.

Perkins said of the story about the buyout money, "Whoever put that out there didn't understand what the plan was."

Well who put the story out there? Big 12 Commissioner Dan Beebe. After his press conference, media outlets came away with the impression that the five schools would give up their buyout money to give to Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahoma. So Dan Beebe is to blame for that.

Perkins also declined to say that the money that would be used to subsidize Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahoma would be the Nebraska and Colorado buyout money. He called the money that could potentially be used to subsidize those teams would be "bundles" of money -- basically money from a variety of places in the conference. Basically, its semantics.