re: All the Mizzou stuff on this board about "They suck" and "They regret coming to

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a) Can they deliver Saint Louis and Kansas City?

So far this is a no but that will not happen overnight

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Curious what you base this on.

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b) Will interaction be more like the Cocks or the Hogs?

Sadly, so far they are more like the Hogs bluster than the Cocks under the radar approach

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Agree about last year. I think they were humbled last year and you'll see the latter approach moving forward.

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c) Will they maintain the AAU status?

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Any actual indication they will lose that status other than doom and gloom?

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d) Will they add a SEC sport to the SEC's collection of trophies?

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I would agree, softball, of any of the sports, is the most likely in the short term. Solid team this year and I believe 2 of the nation's top pitchers coming in next year.

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Curious what you base this on.

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Notorious carriage rate battles in the past. With other college and pro teams in MO (speaking of fans and alumni as there is a high concentration of B1G alumni in Saint Louis and B12 folks in Kansas City) Mizzou does not have the same inelastic demand of say Bama or UK. This is not a knock on Mizzou specifically but more an acknowledgement that east and west coast media owners are more concerned about making dollars than being rah rah about school ties.

Adding Nebraska (with inelastic demand) put carriage rates in NE between 1.00 and 2.00 and was top in the BTN. In Maryland and New Jersey the BTN will not have such an easy sell. If current BTN carriage rates in MD and NJ are 5 cents the BTN may get a boost to 50 cents but they will not get the 1.00 to 2.00 dollars they could with Nebraska. In MO the Cardinals probably have the most inelastic demand and Mizzou may have the most elastic. In AL and MS I am gonna guess the SEC is the dominant brand in their markets.

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Agree about last year. I think they were humbled last year and you'll see the latter approach moving forward.

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I really hope you are correct

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Any actual indication they will lose that status other than doom and gloom?

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Mostly based on the observation that Delany is a ruthless bastard and it is in the interest of the B1G to discredit the SEC at any given opportunity. If Delany retires and is replaced by a moderate then I think the Tigers are safe.

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I would agree, softball, of any of the sports, is the most likely in the short term. Solid team this year and I believe 2 of the nation's top pitchers coming in next year.

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Mizzou fans need to show up in force for the SEC tourney and really show up in the post season if they are not a regional site. NCAA looks at attendance numbers and that is a real strong point for the SEC. NCAA wants teams that sell tickets which makes it harder to leave SEC schools out because of their traveling fans.

UK basketball, SEC football, and SEC baseball all travel well. Mizzou needs to show they can move seats outside of their home venues for all sports and can sell solidly for at least 1 sport. Why else do you think the ACC added Louisville? Their football program is still not a proven commodity and their academics sure do not fit the ACC. Their big draw was Top 5 attendance numbers for both men's and women's basketball.

The easy tell is when Mizzou travels is it easy to get tickets or hard? Nobody expects them to sell like Bama football or UK basketball but they need to be respectable when they are invited so it looks good on both Mizzou and the SEC. The best indication of traveling fan strength is ticket prices for neutral sites. If I can pick up official NCAA tickets for Mizzou for 50 cents on the dollar it means they do not travel well. When Mizzou tickets for the NCAA in Rupp were selling for 10 bucks on the street with a Face Value of 100 bucks it tells me the market knows there is no demand. NCAA wants to make money and notices stuff like that.

Schools have to bid on hosting and they are not going to want teams that have little or no demand.

If that is how you base whether or not Mizzou is carrying KC and STL, then I can assure you, Mizzou will NEVER carry those cities. I won't speak for KC folks, but being in STL, I can guarantee you Mizzou will NEVER knock the Cardinals off their pedestal. Having said that, I don't think they need to in order to "carry" the St. Louis market. It may be a small example of how Mizzou is impacting the STL market, but just this week, the only STL paper hired Dave Matter, who for the last many years has been covering Mizzou football and the SEC for the Columbia paper. I'm hopeful he'll eventually have a daily radio spot as well as most of the writers/tv guys do. I think there's a reason the Post hired a Mizzou beat writer instead of someone else.

As far as travelling, Mizzou will always travel better than most, worse than some. Despite other schools labelling Mizzou as a basketball school, we are not a basketball school. We have had a solid basketball program, but I'd hardly call us a basketball school. I think there are many factors that went into attendance at Rupp, one being that no one ever really identified with this team as they were made up mostly of transfers who were here only 1 year. Expectations for this past year's team were also very guarded. Having said that, if you go back through the actual game threads of our away conference games this year, I would bet on more of them than not you'll find comments from the other schools posters commenting on how well fans showed up. In fact, while I know it's SC, I distinctly remember hearing a louder MU contingent than SC contingent and could clearly hear the MIZ ZOU chant. Travelling will be fine when there is reason to travel.

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If that is how you base whether or not Mizzou is carrying KC and STL, then I can assure you, Mizzou will NEVER carry those cities. I won't speak for KC folks, but being in STL, I can guarantee you Mizzou will NEVER knock the Cardinals off their pedestal. Having said that, I don't think they need to in order to "carry" the St. Louis market.

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I do not think anybody expects that just like they do not expect the Terps to carry Baltimore / DC or Rutgers to carry NYC / Philly. The issue will be how much they bump the basic carriage rate for the SEC in the state of MO. If it goes from 5 cents to 10 cents (at least in the short term) instead of 5 cents to 75 cents you see the financial difference. The folks in Austin thought the LHN would be easy money but they ran into the buzz saw of carriage rate negotiations and learned just how tough they can be.

This is why I keep pointing out that it will take many years to build out MO as a SEC state and possibly a generation. Just as kids born in Texas last year will grow up knowing TAMU as only a SEC school it will take time before they reach recruiting age (15 + years) and more importantly donor age (30 + years) to achieve optimal penetration numbers in the state of MO. This is why cultural fit was so easy for South Carolina when they joined. The Cocks had a shared history with the old SIAA and SoCon plus they had been playing SEC teams throughout their sports history. If TAMU did not have the common history with Alabama (coaches), LSU (games) and Arkansas (SWC) it would have been tougher sledding for acceptance.

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Despite other schools labelling Mizzou as a basketball school, we are not a basketball school. We have had a solid basketball program, but I'd hardly call us a basketball school.

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Either all the Mizzou bloggers on the Rant (and other blogs) are not real Mizzou fans or you are not reading what has been written with an objective eye.

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I think there are many factors that went into attendance at Rupp, one being that no one ever really identified with this team as they were made up mostly of transfers who were here only 1 year. Expectations for this past year's team were also very guarded.

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Sadly we are in the age of one and done and nobody expected Mizzou to be the number 1 draw at Rupp. The issue was that (16) NC A&T, (14) Davidson, (8) CSU, and (11) Bucknell all drew substantially larger fans than (9) Missouri who was closer and bigger than any of these schools. Again, I did not expect Mizzou to out draw (6) Butler, (3) Marquette, or (1) Louisville but the Colorado State folks travelled farther and better than Mizzou by a wide margin.

As stated in a previous post I went to see the Antlers in action and was disappointed in what I saw at the game. As a long time SEC fan I was embarrassed by the apathy of a fellow SEC school. Especially as it was their first year of membership and you would think fans would have travelled better to a fellow SEC city. I travel even when a team is bad just to know the routine when they are good. I can think of many trips where I got lodging or better lodging because of a previous trip that allowed scouting.

From a live interaction the TAMU fans have been much friendlier than the Mizzou folks. The Tigers I met in Rupp were more abrasive yankee types than the souther fans I keep hearing about on the Rant. Granted it was a small sample size but they were more like B1G fans than SEC ones. I am not sure about the Tiger fans @ Hawkins as they have the same colors so harder to pick out in a crowd. I was hoping to get to Columbia for the UGA game to scout for future trips but it fell through.

The thing is though that the BIG TEN has been almost completely inept when it comes to hardware recently:

Last basketball title: 1999(W)/2000(M)
Last football title: 2003
Last baseball title: 1964

As long as Notre Dame is not AAU, the ACC will not side with Delaney.

Dont worry they suck