This book is dedicated to all the people I worked with in the old Big 8 Conference office in Kansas City and also the Sports Information staff at Nebraska. At Nebraska, Don “Fox” Bryant, Bill Bennett, Chris Anderson, Tom Simon, Becky French, Keith Mann, Will Rudd, and a host of others have been great over the years. Nebraska home games were always an event. And Fox always rolled out the Big Red carpet for visiting reporters, as have Chris and Keith in later years.

At the Big 8, DeLoss Dodds, Steve Hatchell, Butch Henry, Mike Scott, Johnny Overby, John Erickson, Helen Atterbury, Jeff Bollig, Ed Grom, Bill Hancock, Tim Allen, Tracie Dittemore, Linda Shetina Logan, Richard Martin, Julie Dorn McBride, Carl James, Tom Starr, Dru Hancock, Prentice Gautt, Becky French, Jeff Seal, Chuck Neinas, Carrollyn Miller, D’Anne Carnahan, Tammy Gannon Byler, and Bruce Finlayson were among the working cast for a conference that epitomized the highest levels of competition and integrity in college athletics. Starting in the early 1970s, the Big 8 Conference office was located in the penthouse suite at the River Hills Mark I Building in downtown Kansas City at Eighth and Cherry, overlooking the nearby Missouri River. The Big 8 office operated in those cramped quarters before moving to a larger location in the nearby Kansas City garment district before becoming the Big 12 and leaving Kansas City altogether for Dallas in the mid-1990s.