re: Outstanding Article on SEC expansion and timeline for Mizzou and A&M

Instead of going to sleep, I read the whole damned thing. Today...I am a man.



It was a good read, though. And it made me appreciate the reasons behind the stability of the conference, and appreciate the way the four expansion programs bought into it. People may bitch about the Texans and Missourians who come bearing their own weird habits, but I've yet to hear one bad word about their willingness to adapt to the ethos of the conference. Someone needs to do something similar with TAMU, Arkansas, and USCe and how they integrated.

What a great conference. If only we could get rid of Tennessee, we would be the perfect conference.

Edit: Who the frick is Jason Sutherland, btw? And why does everyone hate him?

Lot's of thoughts:

First off, Jason Sutherland. He was a guard from about '94-'98 for Mizzou. Came from either North or South Dakota. Anyway, he was hated by other schools because he played basketball like he was playing safety on a football field. He had no hesitation in committing a hard foul. If there was a loose ball, he would dive headfirst into the pile kind of like a fighting for a fumble. A bit like Marshall from Ole Miss. He'd taunt the crowd, etc. Great on your team, but if you played against him you probably hoped he'd blow a knee out. Dude's in his 40's and still plays that way.

Now onto the expansion talk...

Expand again....

Bring KANSAS into the SEC!!!

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I feel like this doesn’t do a good enough job explaining how literally all of this started because tu/DeLoss Dodds/Bill Powers all conspired to create the LHN and the Pac 16. They formulated the Pac-16 without any of the other 5 schools, assuming they’d just do their bidding. They worked out the entire conference schedules for all sports with Larry Scott and refused to even talk to Bowen Loftin about it even when he brought the rumors to his attention. At the same time, formulating the LHN but leading Larry Scott to believe they’d be in for a Pac 16 Network. Their plan was to strong arm Colorado, OU, OSU, Tech, and A&M, then strong arm the network negotiations in their favor.

They were completely dishonest from the beginning and literally caused all of it. Thank God.

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To me UT epitomizes all of the negative traits of Texan culture without any of the positives. I have lots of relatives in Texas and, fortunately, none of them are jackholes like DeLoss Dodds.

Moving to the SEC was the best thing that ever happened to Texas A&M besides admitting women. We should have joined the SEC generations ago.

Expansion: I'm going to do this a bit on how I recall things while using Gabe's article for clarification. Please note, this will be long.

Bevo, OU, the beakers...they always portrayed Mizzou as the school that started it all. They liked to act, and still do, like the Big 12 was a happy little conference where everyone got along great and sang Kumbaya My Lord together after each and every event.

There was discord from the formation of the Big 12, but I didn't realize that until many years later. As a Mizzou guy, I realize my take on this will differ from the A&M guys, but here's a nutshell of what we thought the Big 12 was. Mizzou, and the other old Big 8 schools were under the impression that the Big 8 was adding four of the old Southwest schools, Bevo, A&M, Tech, and Baylor, albeit Baylor got in only because TX governor Ann Richards was a Baylor grad who pushed for them. That's what we were told. The four TX schools knew correctly that the Big 12 was actually a new conference, not the Big 8 adding four schools. Not the biggest deal, but it shows where we're going...

Everything in he Big 8 was based in Kansas City. League offices, basketball tourney's, etc. Well the 1st WTF moment came when the league offices moved to TX from KC. Then, and this is the one that shocked everyone, they decided to rotate the basketball tourney. That pissed a lot of people off. The Bugeaters (Nebraska) went along with much of this and often sided with the southern schools, because they thought they were being set up as the Bevo in the north. Tom Osborne thought wrong.

Ok, enough of that junk. Colorado never seemed to be happy in the Big 8/12. They were always looking west and it was well known that they wanted to be in the PAC. So, it came as little surprise when they bolted once they finally had their chance.

Mizzou administrators desired the Big 10. That thought had existed since the late 80's/earlyl 90's. It's my understanding that when the Big 10 added Penn State, that Mizzou was told your next if ND declines. They declined, but the offer never came.

So, when the expansion talk was going on, Mizzou was looking at the Big 10 again. Their commish had said they were expanding, so it made sense. The MO governor stated how Mizzou should look at the Big 10 and leave the Big 12. That's the comment that Bevo and everyone latched onto when they claim Mizzou started all the conference realignment talk. Note it wasn't actually anyone associated with the school, it was the governor.

Well, no one trusted Bevo, and it turns out we were right since they were negotiating with the PAC. While that was going on Mizzou did in fact have discussions with the Big 10 and supposedly the offer that the Bugeaters got was actually given to Mizzou as well. Mizzou balked at it because the offer required that Mizzou would be a junior member and not a full member of the Big 10 for five years. Mizzou was in the process of coming back with another offer when the Bugeaters decided to jump on it. That left Mizzou in the cold for the time being.

That's when panic kicked in, because the pessimists believed Mizzou was about ready to get left in the dust. I think most Mizzou fans really believed that Bevo, OU, OSU, Tech, and A&M were PAC bound, which would have left Mizzou, the beakers, K-State, ISU, and Baylor without a home. Things got frickin nuts. The beakers, I think with Mizzou's knowledge, were trying to broker a deal that would get them into the Big East. That wouldn't have been terrible. Football would have sucked, but basketball would have been really good. Everything else - terrible.

I saw that as the worst case scenario. The chicken littles were convinced we'd end up in the WAC. I'm on PowerMizzou so this is where this info comes from. I remember a poster, and it wasn't Gabe from what I recall, just kind of floating what about the SEC? I really don't think most of us had even considered that for some reason. Probably since all the focus had been on the Big 10.

I was onboard pretty quickly and I think throughout the summer the movement grew. By the fall, there was a significant push from the people for the SEC. Especially when it was realized that A&M was also making that push. So, once that happened we were all pretty much elated.

As for the rest - as mentioned by others, OU is tied to OSU. It would be real messy if they split. Neither is getting into the Big 10 anytime soon because they do went good academic schools. If OU can ever get away from OSU, I actually see them ending up in the SEC. Bevo? I've actually heard Big 10 for them, but who knows with that crowd. I've heard the beakers to the Big 10 as well. The others? I think they get left out of the Power 5. I think they'd end up in that new version of the Mountain West, something like KSU, ISU, OSU, Colorado State, Air Force, Boise State, Texas Tech, Baylor, TCU, and maybe New Mexico. Just guessing.

Anyway, there's a lot of rambling there and it's long and not proofread, so it may make little sense. Glad as can be to be in the SEC!!!!

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Mizzou and A&M whiny brats still beating their chests about their dynamic move to the SEC, but remain the same mediocre teams they've always been.

I bet these old school SEC fans get tired of your crap.

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Even if some don't like them, everyone loves how much it still pisses off Texas and their gimp to the north, OU. That's justification enough for anybody.

No one cares what you think land thief.

Southerland could fly. He was great a putting down some big dunks on anyone who wanted to get in his way.