mizzou to stay?

[mrydel]

Yahoo says mizzou to sec now official.

You need to sink navy

[Junior]

Yahoo says mizzou to sec now official.

You need to sink navy

can't do that by myself.

[mrydel]

I am referring to your signature. Although you could probably do it by yourself if your really tried.

[Junior]

Ah! Usually don't change that til Monday. Or when 94 mentions it.

[mrydel]

Very well. Carry on.

[Ponymon]

http://tinyurl.com/6ltymd4

It's official: Mizzou to SEC
Share | .StoryDiscussionIt's official: Mizzou to SEC
BY VAHE GREGORIAN STLtoday.com | Posted: Sunday, November 6, 2011 2:30 pm | (54) Comments

After distancing itself from the Big 12 in stages the last few weeks, Mizzou's SEC-ession from a conference it's been part of in various forms for more than a century is complete.

The Southeastern Conference on Sunday morning announced Mizzou as its 14th member, effective in 2012-2013.

"The Presidents and Chancellors of the Southeastern Conference are pleased to welcome the University of Missouri to the SEC," said Dr. Bernie Machen, president of the SEC Presidents and Chancellors and president of the University of Florida, said in a statement. "The University of Missouri is a prestigious academic institution with a strong athletic tradition and a culture similar to our current institutions."

Mizzou will hold a "celebration" at 4:30 p.m. at the Student Center in Columbia with Machen and SEC commissioner Mike Slive joining MU Chancellor Brady Deaton and athletic director Mike Alden.

It's believed MU will be placed in the SEC East with Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee and Vanderbilt.

It's also believed that Mizzou and Texas A&M will be made cross-divisional rivals who play every season, a development that could help MU maintain a recruiting foothold in Texas that it fears losing after mining so much talent there in recent years.

"The Southeastern Conference is a highly successful, stable, premier athletic conference that offers exciting opportunities for the University of Missouri," MU chancellor Brady Deaton said in the SEC statement, adding, "The SEC will provide our student-athletes with top flight competition and unparalleled visibility. We came to this decision after careful consideration of the long term best interests of our university. We believe the Southeastern Conference is an outstanding home for the Mizzou Tigers, and we take great pride in our association with this distinguished league."

It's uncertain how the timetable has been set for next year. MU's withdrawal has been clouded by the Big East's intention to hold West Virginia, in effect MU's replacement in the Big 12, to the 27 months notice of departure stipulated in its bylaws.

West Virginia and the Big East are suing each other over the issue.

If West Virginia can't go in 2012, the Big 12 would be left with nine schools. The league says it needs 10 to supply mandatory inventory for its television contracts.

MU also likely still is in negotiations over exit fees.

The Big 12 and A&M have yet to come to an understanding on A&M's departure, and A&M president R. Bowen Loftin told the Post-Dispatch on Oct. 26 that he had suggested to Deaton that if Missouri does leave they should try to work together on it.

"Why have two separate negotiations going on at once?" Loftin said, adding, "So I told Brady if you're going to do it, let's get our attorneys together and make sure that we have a common platform for discussions here with the Big 12, because it would make no sense for us to independently try to negotiate a settlement.' "

Missouri, naturally, wants to minimize the departure price tag, and it may be trying to make use of the fact the conference has put in writing that it plans to be without Missouri and that interim Big 12 commissioner Chuck Neinas has said it would be "viable" without Mizzou.

MU will begin in the bottom third of the SEC in terms of budget, facilities and what it pays its assistant coaches.

If it's not already underway, a major fund-raising drive will need to be initiated promptly for Mizzou to climb into the middle of the pack in those areas.

The SEC also will pose enormous new challenges in many sports, particularly and most visibly in football. The conference has produced the last five national champions; on Saturday it hosted a game between top-ranked LSU and No. 2 Alabama won 9-6 by LSU.

As of early September, the SEC seemed to have no great interest in MU.

But indicative of the fluidity of the realignment hysteria that has engulfed the football season, the SEC stance began to change soon after Oklahoma president David Boren said on Sept. 2 that OU wouldn't be a "wallflower" in the matter and that "there is no school in the Big 12 more active than we are now" in terms of considering a change.

The next day, MU athletics director Mike Alden said Boren's words "reinforced instability" in the conference and to not be concerned would be "a little bit shortsighted."

As Oklahoma eyed the Pac 12, so, too, did Oklahoma State. Texas and Texas Tech also were in the mix. Their departures would have meant the end for the Big 12, which had already lost Colorado and Nebraska.

Days after Boren spoke, the SEC conditionally accepted Texas A&M after weeks of it being in the works.

The SEC was reluctant to consider another Big 12 school because it didn't want to be seen ethically or legally as an instigator of the demise of the Big 12.

But with the Big 12 on the verge of extinction, the SEC looked closer at Mizzou. And it kept looking even after the Pac 12 decided not to expand because it liked what it saw:

MU touches three SEC states, had 40 football wins in the previous four seasons, a strong men's basketball tradition, two good television markets in St. Louis and Kansas City and membership in the Association of American Universities.

While athletics and a need for a 14th school for sensible scheduling drove the move, a conference not known for its academic standing saw further appeal in the AAU membership.

Mizzou's addition, in fact, gives the SEC more AAU members, four, than the Big 12 now has with three. The SEC pointed to that in its release.

Before Colorado and Nebraska left, the Big 12 had seven AAU members and the SEC just two. Texas A&M and MU join Florida and Vanderbilt in that status.

It's not known precisely how talks between the SEC and MU were initiated.

Along the way, Deaton and Machen, from Florida, likely talked at a two-day AAU meeting in Washington in mid-October.

And perhaps Alden at some point conferred with SEC associate commissioner Greg Sankey. Sankey was commissioner of the Southland Conference when Alden was AD at Southland member Southwest Texas State from 1996-98.

Whatever got it started, MU began to make its intentions clear and tangible at a system Board of Curators meeting in St. Louis on Oct. 4. The curators authorized Deaton to explore options regarding conference affiliation, and Deaton announced his resignation as chairman of the Big 12 board of directors so he could "single-mindedly focus on what's really in the best interests of Tiger Nation."

Two days later, MU abstained on the advice of legal counsel from votes crucial to the future of the Big 12: to seek to add Texas Christian in place of A&M and to sign a grant of rights as part of a revenue-sharing package.

As if the signal weren't clear enough, at an Oct. 21 MU curators meeting in Kansas City, the board empowered Deaton to go from exploring options to "make decisions regarding conference alignment and to negotiate contracts related to such actions."

Afterward, Deaton noted that there was no expectation he would need further board approval, beyond legal counsel, before he could make a move. He publicly acknowledged an exchange of information with the SEC.

At the same meeting, the board also gave Deaton a directive to pursue two events in Kansas City, a basketball tournament and a football game with a "traditional regional rival," with Kansas being the most obvious target.

That was meant as a concession to the west side of the state, which has been less enthusiastic than others over a potential move because of what it stands to lose from an MU departure: the fire in the middle of the rivalry with Kansas and a chunk of its rich basketball tradition through a long history of Big Eight, and later Big 12, conference tournament's there.

After the SEC's premature statement of Oct. 27, the Big 12 the next day omitted MU from a list of schools it expects to be in the conference next year as it announced it had admitted West Virginia.

It was thought that an MU/SEC announcement would come within days, particularly since Deaton was scheduled to leave for a nine-day business trip to India on Nov. 1.

But on Oct. 31, Deaton canceled the trip, largely to focus on final details of a move that finally came to fruition today.



Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/sports/college/ ... z1cxpdQWUD

[Charleston Pony]

might take a 3 day mediation in Hawaii to bring officials and counsel from all affected schools in all conferences to hammer this thing out. Let's get everyone playing with who they have chosen to play with going forward and get it done for the 2012-13 year