Dallas ? Downtown Dallas will be buzzing with college basketball fervor this week as the Big 12 Conference men’s and women’s tournaments make their third appearance in the city.

However, when the final horn sounds on the last game Sunday, no one knows for sure when, or if, the tournaments will return.

Dallas was the host city in 2003 and 2004, the only other times the events were held outside Kansas City in the Big 12’s nine-year history.

What Kansas City is building – and what Dallas could be losing – will play a big role in determining the tournaments’ future sites.

Kansas City is building an NBA-quality arena, and Arlington will be home to the new Dallas Cowboys stadium in 2009. Both would make natural homes for the Big 12 basketball and football championships, if the league were to switch to permanent sites.

However, Big 12 commissioner Kevin Weiberg said that even with the new facilities, Dallas remains a contender for basketball tournaments.

“I think, based on what I’ve heard from our membership, there remains a desire to continue to move the event around,” he said. “With that in mind, I think the prospects (for Dallas) are good.”

Next year’s Big 12 basketball tournaments will be staged in Oklahoma City for the first time. The conference has not awarded sites beyond next year, but could do so during its annual spring meetings in May.

Kansas City is considered the leading candidate to host in 2008, with its new downtown arena – the Sprint Center – scheduled to open in the fall of 2007.

The new arena will replace outdated Kemper Arena, where the men’s tournaments had been held seven of the last nine years. The Sprint Center will give Kansas City an arena competitive with Dallas’ American Airlines Center, which opened in July 2001.

Dallas has the advantage of a more modern, NBA-quality facility for the women’s tournament in Reunion Arena, which opened in 1980. However, that advantage may not be around for long.

A proposed land-swap deal involving Reunion fell through recently, but the facilities’ days are probably numbered. It costs the city $1 million a year to maintain Reunion, and the area around the arena is prime for development to coincide with the Trinity River Corridor Project.

Oklahoma City offers an ideal two-arena setup, with its 18,500-seat Ford Center – which opened in 2002 – next door to the 14,000-seat Cox Convention Center (formerly The Myriad).

Not only will the men’s and women’s tournaments be side-by-side, the Bricktown entertainment district is just a short walk away.

Oklahoma City is the most centrally located of the Big 12’s major cities, but its major drawback is a lack of higher-end hotels in the downtown area.

Dallas has plenty of hotel rooms, in addition to other advantages. Big 12 officials have said the tournaments make about $1 million more in revenue in Dallas because the market can sustain higher ticket prices.

In addition to warm weather, the West End offers an entertainment venue between the arenas. The recent addition of direct flights from Love Field to Kansas City and St. Louis makes Dallas even more accessible.

But Dallas can also expect continued competition to host the tournaments. In addition to Kansas City and Oklahoma City, cities such as Omaha, Neb., and Tulsa, Okla., have either built or are building new arenas.