After weeks of flirtation and speculation, U. Missouri is leaving the Big 12 for a new home in the Southeastern Conference.
The SEC first announced the unanimous decision on its website early Sunday, and Missouri responded to the news by holding a celebratory press conference in front of hundreds of students, alumni and media in the student center later that evening.
“We are pleased, and we are proud to welcome you to the family of the Southeastern Conference,” SEC commissioner Mike Slive told the crowd. “We know that homecoming is a special tradition here at Missouri. So let me say to the entire Missouri nation, ‘Welcome to your new home.'”
Missouri will become the 14th member of the SEC on July 1, 2012, after conference presidents unanimously voted to accept the school this weekend. Slive said Missouri would compete in the league’s East division, but a cross-division rival hasn’t been decided on.
Missouri leaves the Big 12 after 15 years, though the school has been a member of previous incarnations of the conference since 1907. It also leaves behind a 119-year rivalry with Kansas, though MU athletics director Mike Alden expressed hope the tradition would remain intact.
“I think that to suggest that to have conference affiliation be a requirement by why one would have to continue to participate against another institution, I don’t necessarily know if that holds water,” Alden said.
Though he didn’t mention the Big 12 by name, Deaton said “continuing instability in the conference we were in” led Missouri to explore other conferences. In the span of a year, the Big 12 has lost Colorado (Pac-12), Nebraska (Big Ten) and most recently, Texas A&M (SEC).
“We were looking for long-term stability as a university and who we were associated with, who we were going to develop longterm partnerships with so we could have financial security in our planning,” Deaton said. “We spoke to large numbers of groups, our alumni base and our development planning group, and the single message that came through was, as we looked at continuing instability in the conference we were in, to look at alternatives.”
Slive said Missouri approached the SEC early in the football season, which is around the time Texas A&M made efforts to leave the Big 12. Missouri is only the fourth institution to be admitted to the 78-year-old conference.
“So there’s a lot of stability,” Slive said. “In our bylaws, there’s about half of a sentence about what it takes to leave. If you don’t like it with us, you don’t have to be with us. And nobody’s left.”
Missouri took its first step towards conference realignment in early October, when the Missouri board of curators granted Deaton the power to change conferences. Two weeks later, the board gave Deaton the rights to negotiate with other leagues, namely, the SEC.
When the SEC’s website prematurely posted a release welcoming Missouri to the conference last week, it seemed news of the school’s departure was only days away. But no announcement came immediately, perhaps due to the financial concerns related to an exit from the Big 12. According to the Associated Press, Missouri could owe the Big 12 as much as $26 million in exit fees.
Deaton said the conference and Missouri have not decided on any specific amounts as of Sunday. But he assured that the school, not the SEC, would fully foot the bill for any such expense.
The Big 12, anticipating Missouri’s departure, added West Virginia to its ranks last week. It was the second Big East school to join the conference after Texas Christian University reneged on its previous commitment and accepted a Big 12 invite earlier this month. When the Big 12 announced the West Virginia move on its website, it neglected to mention Missouri as one of its members, indicating the conference had already moved on. Even so, Interim Commissioner Chuck Neinas expressed his regret about the school’s departure Sunday.
“The decision by the University of Missouri to leave the Big 12 Conference is disappointing,” Neinas said in a statement. “Mizzou has been a valuable member, with a Conference connection to schools in the Big 12 that dates back to 1907. I personally believe this decision is a mistake and that Missouri is a better fit in the Big 12.”
But when it came down to revenue sharing, the school and conference did not seem to be a good match. The SEC’s large television footprint played a large factor in the decision, but Alden said Missouri ultimately wanted to feel like it was in a contract with equally committed institutions.
“When people start talking about limits to how they’re going to be together, kind of like a pre-nup, that’s not something that we necessarily see as being strong for when you’re trying to look at a league,” Alden said. “So those kind of aspects… that comfort level that we saw and have seen with the SEC has been something that’s been outstanding for us. Those are the kind of characteristics we are looking for.”
Deaton said Sunday’s decision was just an extension of Missouri’s attitude towards forward thinking.
“We have been a frontier university,” Deaton said. “We were the first university west of the Mississippi river, setting a pace for our nation as it developed. Now we’re taking a step into one of the fastest-growing regions of the country and one of the most promising, illustrious athletic conferences in our country today. And we’re very proud to be where we are.”