I get, and share, the eternal vitriol that pretty much every Mizzou fan expresses in this thread toward the Big 12 and Texas. I live in Austin and its even worse for me, I utterly despise what UT did to us and our league.

However, I think perhaps with all the vitriol we lose sight of the good things - yes good things - we gained from the Big 12.

To borrow a line from Chris Rock in describing what America is like to a black person, "The Big 12 is like the uncle who paid your way through college...but molested you."

Yes, Texas molested us.

But they and the Big 12 also gave our football program a lifeblood in the form of a Texas recruiting pipeline that we were savvy enough to find coaches who could exploit. The lifeblood of Mizzou football *even now* is the result of that. Everytime Bud Sasser, Marcus Murphy, Russell Hansbrough makes a play for us this season it all stems back to our time in the Big 12.

And fact is, the tyranny we lived under is what led directly to the brightest possible future for Mizzou athletics in the wealthiest, most egalitarian and most competitive athletic conference in the country - the SEC.

Yes, we will be in therapy the rest of our lives recounting the time our Uncle Longhorn touched us down there. But we took that free college education, got ourselves a 4.0 and a seven figure job and are never looking back. It had to happen exactly the way it did.