OT: Missouri to SEC officially official

Submitted by Sambojangles on

http://espn.go.com/college-sports/story/_/id/7199062/missouri-tigers-mo…

You've probably heard by now, but Mizzou is going to the SEC to balance the conference at 14.

One interesting thing: Missouri will play in the SEC East, which obviously makes almost no sense geographically (though it is relatively close to Kentucky and the Tennessee schools which are all in the East) and it's permanent rival will be Texas A&M. My solution would be to move the Alabama schools to the East, and move Vanderbilt west, along with the two new schools. You would lose Alabama-LSU (the Nick Saban bowl) as every year games, but you would gain Alabama-Florida every year. Permanent rivals would change as follows (the other three stay the same):

Vanderbilt-Tennessee

Ole Miss-Georgia

Missouri-Auburn

Texas A&M-Alabama

It will be interesting to see if the SEC goes to 9 conference games like the B1G, Pac-12 and Big XII. It's not much of a conference if you don't play 5 teams per year, and potentially go half a decade between seeing opponents. 

BlueVoix

November 7th, 2011 at 12:51 PM ^

Does Mizzou have any real rivals in the SEC?  According to Wikipedia, it's Kansas (duh), Illinois (when they aren't hating Michigan too much), Arkansas (so there is one), and Oklahoma (lol).  Texas A&M seems...forced.

Wolverine862

November 7th, 2011 at 2:38 PM ^

Im a Missouri Alum / Fan, and really other than Kansas, Mizzous only real rivalries in the last few years were Nebraska and Illinois.  I personally am probably just going to shut the door on my Mizzou fan side since I think they made a major error going to the SEC, and basically got caught in a Bluff and wouldnt back down.  Personally I would've loved to see Mizzou in teh B1G, since geographically it would fit, academically it would fit, and I think Mizzou would've been what they are in right now in the Big 12, which is a perennial mid tier team, that has a chance at the upset every few years.  In the SEC Mizzou is going to get whipped weakly, tho I am glad they went east, I'd rather take Florida/Georgia than Alabama/LSU.

 

Rabbit21

November 7th, 2011 at 1:18 PM ^

This is unbelieavbly stupid on Mizzou's part.  They had a nice little program going and now it's going to go back to 80's and 90's style irrelevance. 

Shame.

Don

November 7th, 2011 at 1:20 PM ^

Mizzou's roots run deep in my family. My father, mother, and sister graduated from there, and my grandfather taught in the physics dept at Mizzou for many years. I rooted for MIssouri's football team when I was young as much as I did Michigan's. The various major conferences were formed many decades ago around relatively close geographical rivalries, and they prospered and developed in large measure because of these rivalries; the old Big Eight was a great example of this. Merging with Texas and the rest of the old SWC proved to be a disaster, and now the once-sensible conference encompassing the Great Plains states has been blown apart by the IEDs of greed, pride, arrogance, and wishful thinking. Missouri is going to have a tough time competing in football in the SEC

BRCE

November 7th, 2011 at 2:22 PM ^

Sorry OP, but that is one of the worst ideas I have ever heard.

The only thing the B1G got right in their realignment is that geographical integrity of conference divisions is for suckers.

w2j2

November 7th, 2011 at 3:50 PM ^

If someday Notre Dame decided to join the B1G, the B1G would jump at the chance, and probably want to invite another team, like Mizzou.  I bet Mizzou would leave the SEC for the B1G.

Sugaloaf

November 9th, 2011 at 3:13 AM ^

Missouri. check. WVU. check. After Cuse and Pitt are gone, Big East steals from the MWC and CUSA.  We're left with completely unstable conferences: Big East, MWC-USA, BIG 12.  More shoes to drop in coming years.