COLUMBIA, Mo. — Is the Missouri athletics department about to go corporate?
With a new leader, a stadium renovation to finance and the now-typical uncertainty over the future of college sports’ financial form, the corporate route is an attractive one for Mizzou athletics to follow in pursuit of revenue.
More specifically, MU is after the biggest fish in the C-suite sea: Missouri’s Fortune 500 companies.
There were eight of them when Fortune last updated its rankings of the biggest businesses in the U.S., ranging from Centene at No. 25 to Ameren at No. 480.
That quantity of potential partners has caught the attention of football coach Eli Drinkwitz this offseason, who floated those companies as particularly important to the future of Mizzou sports at the April unveiling of a $250 million renovation of Memorial Stadium’s north concourse.