You know what’s missing from the renderings? From the images of what the Liberty Bowl — excuse me, Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium — will look like someday soon?

The Big 12 logo.

There’s no Big 12 logo.

But maybe, someday, there will be.

That was the driving force behind Thursday’s big news conference, where the University of Memphis and the City of Memphis announced their $150 million to $200 million partnership to renovate the stadium.

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It will be great if the renovations result in a better fan experience. It will be fabulous if they help Tigers football win more games.

But Memphis athletic director Laird Veatch was very clear about the real motivation.

“Most importantly,” he said, “it will position us for any potential conference realignment opportunities in the near future.”

Maybe that’s not the Big 12. Maybe it’s an opportunity we can’t imagine right now.

But after Memphis tried (and failed) to wrangle an invitation to join the Big 12 last summer, Veatch was left with no doubt that the school had to do something about the stadium issue.

As he put it during the news conference: “We needed to look like we belong.”

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So will this renovation do that? And wouldn’t a new on-campus stadium have been the better way to go?

Veatch swears the university studied that option. This wasn’t like previous (and lamentable) chapters in the ongoing stadium saga, when university leaders dismissed the possibility of an on-campus stadium out of hand.

The university began by asking a consultant how much it could reasonably raise to spend on a stadium. The number that came back was $200 million.

The university then looked around the country for the sort of stadium it would want to build. It settled on Colorado State’s Canvas Stadium. That stadium cost $238 million when it was built and would cost roughly $400 million today.

That’s when the university decided it would be smarter to partner with the city on a “transformational renovation” of the current stadium.

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And, yes, it is understandable why the decision might give some longtime Memphians PTSD. One of the city’s great cautionary tales involves the old Liberty Bowl. Back when Memphis was pursuing an NFL team, the city decided to fix up the Liberty Bowl instead of building a brand new stadium. And that is why, according to the cautionary tale, the NFL skipped Memphis and went to Jacksonville.

There is such a thing as being penny-wise and stadium-foolish. But Veatch swears that is not happening here.

“There’s no guarantees, we know that,” he said. “It’s not as if you build it and we’re in. But it puts us in a position where we are truly competitive. This is the kind of stadium that looks like it belongs in that club.”

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It does look cool, I’ll give him that. This isn’t just a new press box and a fresh coat of paint. The west side of the stadium, the side where the press box is now, will be completely rebuilt with new suites, club seating and all of the modern (and expensive) bells and whistles. The plans also include remaking the “halo” around the building to add trees and stages and food trucks.

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So, again, will it be good enough?

There’s just no way to know about that. Indeed, there is no way to know what realignment opportunities will arise that could be boosted by a renovated stadium. But it’s not like a brand new stadium is a requirement to move up in the college football world. If it was, Cincinnati’s Nippert Stadium (built in 1915, refurbished in 2015) would have disqualified that school from joining Central Florida and Houston (both of which have new stadiums) in the Big 12.

So now the trick is making all of this happen. The city and the university have given themselves roughly 18 months to put together the financing and nail down final plans. If you happen to have an extra $5 million lying around, you might think about giving Veatch a call. Or an extra $500, for that matter. Every little bit helps. 

The hope is to start construction after the 2023 season and be finished in time for kickoff in 2025. Let’s trust that schedule sticks.

And then we can find out the answer to a version of the question first posed in “Field of Dreams”: If you don’t build it — but you fix it up really, really nicely — will they still come?