mu fans continue to debate their departure ...

[tmcats]

this guy, scottsdale tiger, writes an excellent summary of what happened. i found it interesting and thought some of you might as well.

Revisionist History
Posted on: March 21, 2020 at 14:21:57 CT
ScottsdaleTiger MU

Posts:11033
Member For:21.15 yrs


Colorado left the Big XII for the Pac 10 in 2010 inorder to be associated with the Pac 10's elite academic institutions and escape being associated with the Big XII's lesser academic institutions..

Nebraska's departure not long thereafter followed a dispute with Texas over the continued admission of Prop 48 kids. Nebraska wanted to continue to allow them to receive scholarships, Texas didn't. The conference schools opted to stop allowing them.

Texas A&M left next in order to escape the shadow of Texas.

In the summer of 2011, the PAC 12's Commissioner, Larry Scott, approached Texas, Texas Tech, OU and OState about moving to the Pac !2 and making it the Pac 16.

About the same time Mizzou, KU, KState and Iowa State agreed to work together to keep the Big XII intact. Brady Deaton, Mizzou's Chancellor, was the "leader" of the group.

The move of Texas, Tech, OU and OState quieted down in the summer of 2011, but was raised by David Boren, President of OU, in news conference in the latter part of the summer. Boren made some comments that OU would put its interests above everything else in any re-alinement discussions.

Then (according to a Deaton interview posted in November 2011 on the Tiger AD web site), Mizzou became very concerned that if OU, etc. moved to the PAC 10 that Mizzou would end up in a conference that would not be able to command as good a TV deal and Mizzou's revenue TV would be diminished. Deaton stated in the interview that he and Alden concluded that Mizzou couldn't live with that happening and Deaton instructed Alden to star looking around for alternatives.

Alden went to the Big Ten and it agreed to admit Mizzou, but would require Mizzou take only a partial conference distribution for the first five years (the same deal that it had offered to Nebraska and Nebraska had taken). Aldon then approached the SEC and it offered to add Mizzou with no reduction in Mizzou's conference distributions. Deaton and Alden jumped on the offer.

It is not clear if Deaton informed KU, KState or Iowa State that Mizzou was looking around for other alternatives after Boren gave his press conference. My guess is he didn't.

The bottom line is Deaton and Alden took Mizzou (with the Curators' approval) to the SEC for the $$$$. If the B1G had offered an immediate full share of conference distributions, Mizzou would be in the B1G today.

[stlcatfan]

Everybody is going to have their own version of how things went down, depending on which school they are a fan of. The Missouri governor had a lot of egg on his face early on when he was singing the praises of the Big Ten, while putting down the academics of TTU and oSu (by name).

What I remember most from that time period was the flooding of Mizzou and Aggie fan sites by SEC fans, who were spreading fear of a disintegrating Big 12 and exhorting the locals to blast their ADs with emails and phone calls, demanding to get out of the Big 12 and join the SEC. Those were rough times for the conference. Fortunately, we survived.

[NealyFan]

I loved the old Big 8. Colorado was an outlier, especially in basketball. Ideally, we should have had Arkansas after the SWC imploded.

To this day: no one can convince me that we shouldn’t have grabbed Cincinnati and Louisville as a land bridge for West Virginia - the new Colorado of the Big Twelve.

[stlcatfan]

To this day: no one can convince me that we shouldn’t have grabbed Cincinnati and Louisville as a land bridge for West Virginia - the new Colorado of the Big Twelve.

That was my hope at the time. It would have also gotten us back to 12 schools. Thankfully the ten-school conference has worked out well. I like the round robin in football and the double round robin in basketball. It doesn't work quite as well for football conference championship games. I do like the current version of the Big 12 over the original one, I have to say. The original one was much less cohesive than this one - too much of "us against them." This one feels closer to the old Big 8.

[Kid In the Hall]

Hindsight and all that...

But, WVU was a poor choice and TCU was an even poorer choice. WVU, literally, brings nothing to the table with respect to things that matter (population base, etc.) and TCU is similar in that it brings nothing of substance given that it doesn't add a media market and it has a minute fan base.

Quite literally, the Big 12 leadership could have picked just about any tandem of schools and they would have provided more benefit to the league (UCF, USF, Louisville, UConn, Cincy, Memphis, etc.). It's absolutely a colossal failure by league administrators.

The problem is/was that the leadership couldn't see more than 5-feet in front of their faces and they were concerned with saving face, which is why they picked "established" programs that actually offered very little aside from the perception that they were "good" programs. The "safe" choice is usually not the best choice and it absolutely is true in this case.

Now, there's noise that the Big 12 could/should try and poach some schools from the Pac-12. Even if that's viable - maybe, maybe not - who has any shred of confidence that the Big 12 wouldn't eff it up (even if they did try - which, the league probably won't). because it's too risk averse, too reactionary, etc.)

[Hypeman]

MU probably made a good choice from a financial and risk management perspective. I always thought of MU as St. Louis’ school and KU as KC’s school. I always feel like St. Louis has a bit of a southern vibe too, so maybe that’s where they belong.

I don’t know if the Big 12 made bad choices in WVU and TCU. It probably doesn’t matter or make any difference. And it depends which perspective you are looking from. From UT’s perspective, we’re all bad choices and 2nd rate, and some of us are even 3rd class.

[stlcatfan]

MU probably made a good choice from a financial and risk management perspective. I always thought of MU as St. Louis’ school and KU as KC’s school. I always feel like St. Louis has a bit of a southern vibe too, so maybe that’s where they belong.

I don’t know if the Big 12 made bad choices in WVU and TCU. It probably doesn’t matter or make any difference. And it depends which perspective you are looking from. From UT’s perspective, we’re all bad choices and 2nd rate, and some of us are even 3rd class.

When Mizzou made the decision to go to the SEC, some Mizzou fans here in St. Louis that I knew were not happy with the move to the SEC East. They understood the financial issues, but hated the fact that they were no longer going to be playing a lot of their old Big 8 rivals. It meant crazy long road trips and games against teams with whom they had no history or rivalry. A lot of folks who were in favor of going to the SEC talked about all the games they would be playing against the likes of Alabama and LSU. Well, with a 14-team league and being thrown in the eastern division, those annual games against Bama didn't quite work out. The SEC newness wore off pretty fast here. Then again, St. Louis is more of a pro-sports town.

As far as culture goes, Missouri is kind of split. The northern half to two-thirds is more "Midwestern" and would have been a better fit in the Big Ten. The southern half of Missouri, especially south of a line from Springfield to Cape Girardeau is more similar to Arkansas than Iowa.

[tmcats]

i never blamed missouri for leaving. ku would have left too if the b10 had offered.

i thought louisville would have been a far better choice than wvu or tcu for that matter. tcu probably got in because of texas politics, i.e. wanting to fix the internal state issues associated with the frogs getting booted in favor of baylor in the original b12.

i do agree that both louisville and to a lesser degree cincinnati would have been stronger members. wvu is just too far away and the conference already dominates texas as stated above.

[AJcat7755]

MU story sounds a lot like "it wasn't the Big 10 that didn't like us, we didn't like their offer". Sort of their way of explaining that is wasn't NU being picked over MU.

I agree with several that say the state of MU is a bit of a mixed mess. The western side, including KCMO, is closer to the mid west. St Louis wants to be a Chicago style town and the southern part of the state is closer to SEC.

[02Cat]

I've stated many times that I wished we would have worked out a deal with the ACC prior to adding WVU & TCU. Our eight, plus a select eight from the ACC (Clemson, Duke, North Carolina, NC State, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Florida State, Miami or Wake Forest or Georgia Tech) could have made a very interesting league of 16.

I do like our 10 school conference now, however.