I'm not going to pretend like the State of Missouri is entirely southern, it isn't. Especially once you get north of I-70. it starts to feel more like Iowa pretty quickly. And Kansas City (where I live) feels more western than anything. Think smaller Denver without the mountains and significantly more crime.

But a significant part of the State (I would argue about half of it, including up to and touching Columbia) feels like a southern/border state. And that is no different than states like Florida (the southern half is basically Cuba and retired New Yorkers), Texas (just the gulf coast really fits in this conference culturally), or Kentucky (Louisville and Cincinnati are no more southern culturally than St. Louis or Kansas City).

So I really struggle after a decade of Mizzou being in the conference to understand how it is such a poor fit. I've visited plenty of SEC campuses and have spent time in pretty much every SEC state. From my perspective, Columbia/Mizzou is more alike most SEC campuses and college towns than different. To me, the Texas schools are a far stranger/worse fit than Columbia and Mizzou could ever be. If you can visit College Station, Austin, and Columbia, MO and then tell me with a straight face that Austin has more in common with a typical SEC college town, I'll personally request that we get kicked out of the conference. It honestly seems like this whole "Mizzou bad fit, kick out Mizzou" is just something that gets regurgitated on message boards by people who have never visited and assume Columbia, MO is basically Vancouver.