Mizzou AD Laird Veatch sets early priorities for athletic department

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KMIZ)

Mizzou Athletic Director Laird Veatch has officially hit the 60-day mark on the job in Columbia. As a result, he will give a presentation to the UM Board of Curators on Thursday afternoon to update them on his early priorities for the department.

On Wednesday, Veatch met with the media in Springfield, ahead of that meeting, to chat about his first eight weeks on the job.

"It's really meeting folks," he said. "It really has to be about getting out, not only in the department, but really my focus has been even more so getting out all over the state...It gives you a real sense for just the energy and passion and the momentum around Mizzou right now. It's pretty incredible."

Veatch said he has set a couple of early priorities for his athletic department, as he gets settled in Columbia. Fundraising for the $250 million renovation to the north end zone at Faurot Field tops the list and is closely followed by monitoring the ever-changing world of name, image and likeness (NIL).

Athletic departments across the country are waiting to see if a house settlement, which would change the NIL landscape, will get final approval. If approved, the settlement will allow universities and conferences to directly pay student-athletes through revenue sharing. In addition, the conferences and NCAA would backpay roughly $2.8 billion to current and former athletes, from 2016, for the next ten years. All of those athletes claim they lost out on potential NIL revenue.

"A lot of it right now is speculation, as you know, so it's trying to anticipate what this could look like and a lot of modeling and strategic discussions in the background with the department and key individuals in the conference and others," he said. "A lot of what you're trying to do is predict what it may be and how we could position ourselves."

The state of Missouri has put itself ahead of the rest of the country, as far as being competitive in the NIL space. Even with those advances, Veatch said he still sees areas for growth as far as NIL opportunities go.

"Some of that is going to depend on where the house settlement goes and how all this plays out," Veatch said. "I do think there's significant opportunity. I've been really impressed with the kind of infrastructure that's been built here at Mizzou, in large part because of the state law and how we've all kind of come together to make this happen. In many ways, I do see that sort of next era of NIL support really needing to come from the corporate sector, which is what NIL is intended to be on the front end...We need to really lean into that. I think it's a huge opportunity for Mizzou, in part because we're in such a big state."

There are a lot of items on the to-do list before the 2024-25 athletic year begins. He said is going to focus on not pushing too hard in July and giving his staff a break, but will then hit the ground running come August.