Quote:How do the Missouri fans feel about this, Kathy? I would be extremely unhappy if Stanford left the Pac-10, even if it was for some new superconference that meant an extra $50 million a year.
My personal preference is to leave the Big 12 alone. Missouri is a founding member of the conference going back to the Big 6, Big 7, Big 8 and Big 12. The rivalry with Kansas is the second-oldest college rivalry in the country. (It is so intense that when many Mizzou teams travel to Lawrence to play away games -- a three-hour drive at most -- hotel stays and meals are taken on the Missouri side of Kansas City. Tigers spend as little time & money in Kansas as they can.) The Civil War may be a century and a half in the past, but so much of the two schools\' tradition is tied up in that event -- even their mascots are derived from the war.
I wouldn\'t care if the Texas schools left the Big 12 -- the alignment is only 14 years old (scandal-plagued SWC was in tatters) -- but I would regret losing the old conference ties. (Latest scuttlebutt: Texas & Texas A&M looking at joining the SEC.)
The so-called rivalry with Illinois isn\'t. (And Pastor, the Border War is MU-KU; Arch Rivalry is the moniker for the Illinois series played in St. Louis.) The annual basketball game is played in St. Louis because that\'s where the money is -- same with the less-traditional football game the teams have played over the last decade. No one wants to travel all the way to Champaign-Urbana (or to Columbia) for a game. St. Louis has been a convenience and a money magnet, just as Arrowhead Stadium has been for MU-KU football (unless you\'re a business owner in one of those college towns who has watched revenue from one of your biggest fall weekends get siphoned off to the big city). In fact, Illinois pulled out of the MU series (2010 is the last year), citing the need to play home games at home (also, the Illini had never won a game in the modern series played in the Dome).
The Big Ten started this madness in an attempt to pressure Notre Dame into joining the conference. The Big Ten wants a conference playoff game and it needs 12 teams to do that. ND is the real prize (and the most logical new member). All this is moot if ND comes to the table (and judging from the Irish\'s fortunes in recent years, that might be prudent). Missouri saw the opportunity to negotiate for a bigger slice of the TV money that Texas has hogged since the Big 12 formed. Nebraska, too, whose on-field fortunes have sagged recently, sees a golden opportunity, although at last week\'s Big 12 meeting, AD Tom Osborne indicated he wished for the Huskers to stay put. (Of course, none of these folks is above prevarication -- Mizzou\'s duplicitous duo of chancellor and AD are universally reviled and the most disliked people in Columbia, yet they\'re Teflon when it comes to escaping controversy with their paychecks intact.) Nebraska is Mizzou\'s second most-hated rival (in football) but it\'s only about the sports. I can\'t see the Omaha TV market pulling in more viewers than St. Louis & Kansas City, though. Oklahoma AD Joe Castiglione (former Mizzou AD and arguably one of the most powerful people in OK) has pleaded passionately to keep the Big 12 intact. Frankly, I don\'t want to see OU in the Pac-10 because I don\'t want Stanford to have to play OU all the time -- it rarely seems to turn out well for us.
Fans in Columbia are mixed. Some see MU in the Big Ten as a financial opportunity and a chance to tell Texas to kiss off. But it would kill recruiting in the Lone Star State. Fans of basketball & some minor sports (wrestling, swimming but not baseball & softball) would see better competition. Originally, before the Pac-10 raider bombshell, the thinking was that if MU left, Arkansas would join the Big 12. And there are rumors that Texas would go independent like ND.
Let\'s face it: This is all about the money. We\'re looking at the eventual formation of four 16-team superconferences and a playoff series for the national championship (bye-bye BCS, bye-bye gazillion bowl games). What started out a century ago as a pleasant form of student entertainment based on regional pride has morphed into a TV revenue plan that knows no bounds for greed. This crap about academic similarities and Tech\'s nonmembership in the American Association of Universities is all a smokescreen. Athletic departments don\'t care about the students anymore, and broadcast companies sure as heck don\'t. Travel among these non-geographical alignments is going to eat up budgets and more importantly, student class time, but that isn\'t going to stop the big dogs. They might as well spin off the sports programs as independent businesses and rename the athletic complexes as business incubators (hey, MU\'s incubator is right next door to the sports park). That\'s one way to fill the economic development mission of a land-grant university -- they call it "entrepreneurship" these days.
