Missouri Mania In The Morning

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Just to make sure you’re up on every angle of Missouri’s decision to grant chancellor Brady Deaton the power to look around, here’s a festival of links, summaries and our own opinions on what’s being said across the nation this morning:


1.  Deaton — who resigned as chairman of the Big 12′s board of directors — said that he will “be meeting (today) with my team and examining all probabilities, all options, that we want to look toward.  That will take some time.”

2.  Asked if a change could come before next football season, Deaton said, “I don’t think we know the full answer to that at this time.”  (Perhaps, but you can bet those SEC schedule-makers who’ve been toying with 13-team options will now be cooking up 14-team possibilities as well.)

3.  This Kansas City Star writer suspects that somewhere between 75 and 90% of Mizzou fans were happy with last night’s announcement.

4.  Kansas State AD John Currie — a former SEC assistant AD at Tennessee — had this to say about a potential Missouri departure:  “Missouri leaving our conference would be a tremendous loss to our conference, our heritage.  It would also be a loss to Missouri to leave, and I think most people at Missouri don’t want to leave.  I know that most people at Texas A&M didn’t want to leave the Big 12 Conference.”  Huh, say what?

5.  This contributor to The Star believes Missouri is a “poor fit” with the SEC and that they’re giving up “what would be a B10 bid at some point down the road.”  (According to Jeff Sagarin’s computers, this is a better move for MU basketball than football.)

6.  Mike DeCourcy of The Sporting News doesn’t believe new Tiger hoops coach Frank Haith will be happy with a move to the SEC.

7.  PowerMizzou.com — the Rivals site covering the Tigers — writes the following: “Due to Missouri’s relative proximity to the current SEC schools and a state with approximately two million television sets, the Tigers have become one of a few schools in the crosshairs of speculation.”  (Hmmm.  Now, as I read other sites today claiming to have broken the news last month that Mizzou could be an SEC target, I seem to remember another site touting Missouri’s population, TV markets and proximity to the SEC way back in May of 2010.  We didn’t think it would happen in 2010 — and it didn’t — but this site was the first to identify Missouri as a good “get” for the SEC some 18 months ago.  For the exact sames reasons now being discussed.)

8.  Orangebloods.com — the Rivals site for Texas — claims that their sources have said “a deal was nearly brokered on Tuesday that would have had the nine remaining schools in the Big 12 granting their TV rights on the Tier 1 and Tier 2 level for more than six years.”  However, Texas balked at restrictions that would have been placed upon the Longhorn Network.  (In other words, “Hit the bricks if you like, Mizzou, we’re not changing our network.”)  The site also reports — with likely tippage from Texas sources — that the Big 12′s targets for expansion are BYU, TCU, Louisville and Cincinnati.

9.  Assuming that Missouri is SEC-bound and that the Big 12 will respond by raiding the Big East, won coach from that league texted ESPN.com this message last night: “the big east is finished.”

10.  Former Texas A&M and Alabama coach Gene Stallings believes we’re headed toward four 18- to 20-school conferences.