The University of Missouri appears about ready to shed the shackles of inertia, indecisiveness and resistance to change that brought the forces of conference realignment to a crawl for a couple of weeks.
Pete Thamel of the New York Times reports that the UM Board of Curators will likely approve an application to join the Southeastern Conference later this week. If they do follow through, and it wouldn’t surprise anyone if they didn’t, the Big 12 Conference would be down to nine members.
Louisville is said to be first in line, but that depends heavily on how prone Brigham Young is to emulating Notre Dame’s bigger-than-thou hubris at any given point in time. They’re negotiating, they’re not negotiating, the talks have gone awry, they’re close to an agreement. Can’t anyone make a clear-cut decision these days?
The BYU concern goes away if the Big 12 decides to get back to 12 members. But then there’s that indecisiveness again, Texas wants 10, Texas is okay with 12. Texas wants this, Texas wants that. You know how it goes. The way conference realignment has gone thus far, don’t be surprised if BYU goes first.
That would leave Louisville, West Virginia and Cincinnati to pick from if the conference goes to 12.
The UC fan base embarrassed itself last weekend. A team with a 4-1 record only able to attract 40,000 people to a game with an arch-rival in a 65,000-seat stadium. Homecoming. Beautiful fall weather. Between 5,000 and 10,000 of those fans from Louisville. Don’t think someone from the Big 12 didn’t notice.
I’d like to see the Big 12 expand to fourteen. I think the league can do this and enhance rather than compromise each school’s revenue haul.
BYU
Louisville
West Virginia
South Florida
Central Florida
The Florida teams bring gung-ho fans. They bring the Tampa and Orlando TV markets. They give the league recruiting possibilities in Florida as well as in Texas. The athletes from OK State and other schools get away games at beach and recreation towns.
And UCF hates USF. There’s that.
I hate writing this but the pessimist in me has to. UofL will be stuck in the worst available conference no matter what happens. A lot of fans- unfortunately- are resigned to this being fact. I cannot believe I feel this way and hope I’m incorrect but the writing is on the wall. We hope Navy and Air Force can protect us right? What a joke. GO CARDS!
If BYU is in the mix then Boise State is also very much in the mix. Don’t kid yourself into thinking its only BYU and Big East teams the Big 12 is looking at. BYU and Boise State would make excellent travel partners and BYU and the Big 12 are both looking at that as well.