I don't think the SEC really took Mizzou for television markets. I think it was for two much more long-term, strategic reasons:

1. Mizzou solidifies the conference's western and northern border and insulated it from rival conferences' expansion. Particularly, from Big Ten expansion while ensuring that a Big 12-PAC-12 merger would never become a meaningful rival on the SEC's western border. I know that the SEC moreso than any other conference respects tradition, but the fact is that conference expansion has been escalating since the SEC added USCe and Arkansas in 1992. It's been expand or die since at least that time, and ironically, the traditional South has always been ahead of the curve there.

2. Mizzou has a ton of potential. True, Mizzou has never consistently lived up to its potential, but it's still there nonetheless. While y'all like to shite on Mizzou, it is the only FBS program in a state of six million people and has no true rivals in a geographic range of over 500 miles. It's an AAU institution with a big, fat research budget and an enormous sway over state politics. It's one of the larger land-grant schools by almost any metric: endowment, budget, enrollment, undergraduate programs, or graduate programs. I think the folks in the SEC office recognized that with enough time being exposed to SEC football-crazed fanbases and money to build up the program, we will eventually become a worthy peer to further cement the conference's northwest borders.

And I hate to tell the detractors, but it's starting to happen after our fair share of growing pains. We're spending more money on our athletic program than at any point in history. We've poured $300+ million in our facilities in the past seven years. We have the best football recruiting class we've ever had BY FAR coming in next season. Now we just need to build consistent results and fan support. But it will come. Meanwhile, the flagship schools to our north and west are floundering without a good home: to the west, nothing needs to be said about the sad state of KU football, Nebraska has floundered in the B1G and has lost all of its recruiting pipelines, and Oklahoma State, Iowa State, and Kansas State are stuck in the remnants of the Big 12, playing afterthought urban commuter schools.