IRVING, Texas - A few days after the Big 12 was preserved, commissioner Dan Beebe brought together the athletic directors of the 10 remaining schools in the conference.
There was some healing to do.
Egos had been bruised, relationships strained in the whirlwind of a week since Colorado moved to the Pacific-10, Nebraska to the Big Ten and this conference's fate swung on Texas' decision to stay put.
Beebe cut right to it. Everyone had something to say, so they might as well say it.
One at a time, the athletic directors went around the table getting things off their chest.
"We needed to clear the air, to separate fact from fiction," Oklahoma AD Joe Castiglione said.
It didn't take long. Soon, there was a sense of gratitude for sticking by one another. Then came optimism as they discussed the league's new direction.
It was exactly what Beebe wanted - another good call by the man being hailed as "The Savior Of The Big 12."
But, who is Dan Beebe?
And how the heck did he pull this off?
He's a communicator, someone who can relate to anyone.
He tells everyone what he thinks, regardless of whether it's what they want to hear, and he expects them to do the same.
"He can take a shot and he can give one," Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds said.
Beebe, 52, doesn't think he has all the answers. But he believes he can find them by talking to enough knowledgeable people.
Beebe, a Walla Walla, Wash., native who played football in junior college and at Cal Poly Pomona, was hired by the NCAA in enforcement during a dirty era. As an investigator and later a director of enforcement, he was involved in Southern Methodist's precursor to the death penalty in the mid-1980s and Barry Switzer's demise at Oklahoma.
He was only 32 when he became commissioner of the Division I-AA Ohio Valley Conference. He kept the job 13 years, although not completely by choice.
He joined the Big 12 as second-in-command in 2003. He moved up in '07.
By keeping a low profile, Beebe went into the conference shuffling as an unknown. Keeping that low profile during all the conference turbulence hurt him in the court of public opinion.
Critics portrayed him as a buffoon who was in over his head. It was written that if Beebe were running BP, "he'd be standing on the tar-stained white sand beaches in the state of Florida, emphatically declaring 'what oil?'"
Meanwhile, Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott was seen jetting around wooing Big 12 schools.
"I cannot remember a single event in intercollegiate athletics where the focus came on one individual so unfairly," said Donnie Duncan, a football coach at Iowa State and athletic director at Oklahoma before joining the league office. "This was not a two-week effort. It was not a plane-in-the-air, what-can-we-do-about-it? panic scenario. There was a lot of groundwork that had been laid."
About six months before the crisis, Beebe began visiting every president and athletic director to find out what they wanted.
About two months before, he set up an inner circle of advisers: television consultant Joel Lulla from New York, lawyer Kevin Sweeney from Kansas City, associate commissioner Tim Weiser and Duncan. Their first meeting was at an airport hotel.
"We played out every scenario, every aspect of what might happen," Duncan said. "It wasn't just involving the Pac-10. It was the national picture. If A moves to B, and B moves to C, then what happens? Who would pay for it? How does TV benefit? How do they not benefit? Then from a legal standpoint, what are our parameters?"
When Nebraska and Colorado left the Big 12 in June, Beebe was ready for it. Getting there so quickly meant he couldn't handle a single more defection, much less the five the Pac-10 sought.
School leaders repeatedly said many things mattered, such as their part of the country having its own league and maintaining rivalries. They also had to appease alums - and avoid alienating other folks.
All that aside, money was a huge factor.
The Big 12 has a $480million deal with ABC-ESPN that runs through 2015-16 and a $78 million contract with Fox Sports Net through 2011-12. Beebe got both networks to keep everything intact, guaranteeing the remaining schools a bigger cut.
Nothing new was signed, but between Lulla's projections and Beebe's conversations, there was reason to believe the top schools eventually would get $20million per year.
Finally, they got the break they needed. Texas was staying.
Beebe doesn't like being called "The Savior" because he knows how much other people did, from his inner circle to the ADs, presidents and their inner circles.
Still, he's proud of how things played out.
"I think my characteristics were needed in this time," he said. "Different people's characteristics may be needed in other times."