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The MWC/C-USA alliance may not really be occurring instead they could combine with the Big East, select MAC and select WAC schools.

The Big XII meets on Monday, so expect a decision from Mizzou on Sunday.

Is there really a problem which needs a solution? If they go to 16 schools, the current Pac-12 members will lose 2.1% of their future media revenue. And losing it to a state with a population of under 4 million (Oklahoma) and one under 3 million people (Kansas). Sure, the Missouri side of Kansas City would have to be added, but that is not a footprint which is enough for them to add for the sake of adding right now. The biggest issue to be dealt with with Missouri leaves is can the remaining Big XII members find opponents to play them next season as replacements. The price to get your a$$ beat by a Big XII school may have gone up 30%.

The rub is more with the Pac-10 replay officials after their 2006 game.

I think that the issue is that the change was not announced here in "Forum Announcements". I get the change and I will deal with it apporpriately, but it was somewhat unannounced when there is a thread for announcements by Moderators.

Just to follow up on this. Missouri could decide on SEC by Thursday. Please, Missouri is not in the "position to decide" anything but that they want to leave the Big XII and they as a university owned KOUM as a tv station. which is NBC affiliate. They may have to deal with that as well. The conference has to them in. That is how they may have lost the B1G as they bragged too much.

Mizzou as "a top basketball" school is laughable. How many Final Fours did Norm Stewart take them too with all the alleged talent he recruited? Zero. Even with randomness, neither he (32 years), Quin, or Anderson ever got there.

Just to follow up on this. Missouri could decide on SEC by Thursday. What the University of Missouri decides does not really matter! What the 12 current SEC universities decide IS what matters.

If Mizzou's application to SEC is ?inevitable and imminent,? and the same source is also positive make me think that Slive has convinced his presidents/chancellors to admit them and even Alabama had pull not to move Auburn to the SEC East.

Good for the MWC and CUSA. This is a great move to help stop the poaching of the lower level conferences. The blending of mediocre is never good. There will be a group within these 22 who will think that they are superior than the others and will try to "trim the fat".

A few quick items: 1-Rutgers is now "officicially exploring their options" if they really have any. 2- Last year, the Big East presidents/chancellors rejected a proposal from the commissioner to raise their exit fee from $5M to $17-20M. 3-Conference USA exit fee is $7M. 4-Remember, this will still trickle down to conferences like the CAA and A-10 since there are teams there looking to move up to FBS.

Because the Big East set themselves up to be THE dominant basketball conference and are tragically realizing just how much of a priority football is over basketball. They were in denial just too long and now they're paying for the bad timing. You're exactly right. So then, why can't we just have football-only conferences and let basketball and other sports shake out accordingly? They openly discussed expansion during the football media days in Newport, RI in early August. However, they were caught off guard by Pitt and SU. They turned down the ESPN TV deal last year, and at the time, were right in testing the market since the landscape for live programming changed with the Pac-12 deal this summer FOX airing games on FX, and NBC/Comcast deeper into the picture. Now, three schools will leave with their negotiating window will open in 2012.

Ucf is the only one of those schools that makes since logisticallyish since it is in the east. This is why I loved the fact that tge PAC 12 turned down expansion is that the big XII is great with having tight quarters and tcu was the only correct fit. Byu is a little out there and so is louisville but there really aren't anymore choices unless they want to grab tulane or smu and Houston to push Oklahoma and Oklahoma state to the north. Geography is not as relevant as you're making it out to be. And apparently neither is your grammar. O great sir I did not know these posts were being graded. I promise my essay on Monday will be much mo betta than me comments on this here message bord o great one!! Haha and on geography, I guess some people on here make that argument, as well as history a big deal when it fits into their posts and some are disconnected enough from the open road because of their fat pockets that buying a plane ticket to 4 or more away games is not a big of a deal (I'm assuming you are well off enough to pull this off). This does not include just football travel though, how about the fans, friends, and family that want to travel with the team every week in whatever sport they choose to follow? Guess you have fat enough pockets for them as well. Guess geography had nothing to do with tcu choosing one seemingly weakening conference for another esp when they could have dominated the big east every year as compared to the big XII. It didn't. Money did. Currently, TCU receives $1M/year in TV rights fees from the current MWC contract (which goes through 2016; no renegotiation going on there when games get a 0.14 rating on CBS Sports Network) If they played a game in the Big East, they would get approx. $10M/year in TV right fees from that conference's current TV deal which ends in 2013. By going to the Big XII, they will receive at least $15M/year in TV right fees for the next six years. The only thing which playing locally does for TCU is ensures that they will have Amon Carter seat 50,000 since they can easily get donors to pledge the money to get to that capacity as well as they know that they will have sellouts for conference home games. Thank you. I know money always plays a part in all of this madness. Do you believe tcu would have made the move to the big XII if Pitt and su would have stayed in the big east and the big XII would not have agreed to share the tv tier 1 and 2 money equally? I just can't seem to believe that tcu would have went to the big east when the conference in their own backyard would have come calling even if it was in a worse state than the big east. If Pitt and SU remained in the Big East it would have been due to the fact that the conference accepted the ESPN offer which would have given them similar money to the ACC. That is first. Secondly, the deals other media contracts, namely the Pac-12, received since Nebraska and Colorado left the Big XII (and formation of LHN) played a role on aTm leaving and the other Big XII institutions complaining about Texas. Thirdly, Doss had Dan Beebe in his back pocket and TCU did not get an invite until Beebe was replaced in a coup from namely the former Big 8 schools.

Ucf is the only one of those schools that makes since logisticallyish since it is in the east. This is why I loved the fact that tge PAC 12 turned down expansion is that the big XII is great with having tight quarters and tcu was the only correct fit. Byu is a little out there and so is louisville but there really aren't anymore choices unless they want to grab tulane or smu and Houston to push Oklahoma and Oklahoma state to the north. Geography is not as relevant as you're making it out to be. And apparently neither is your grammar. O great sir I did not know these posts were being graded. I promise my essay on Monday will be much mo betta than me comments on this here message bord o great one!! Haha and on geography, I guess some people on here make that argument, as well as history a big deal when it fits into their posts and some are disconnected enough from the open road because of their fat pockets that buying a plane ticket to 4 or more away games is not a big of a deal (I'm assuming you are well off enough to pull this off). This does not include just football travel though, how about the fans, friends, and family that want to travel with the team every week in whatever sport they choose to follow? Guess you have fat enough pockets for them as well. Guess geography had nothing to do with tcu choosing one seemingly weakening conference for another esp when they could have dominated the big east every year as compared to the big XII. It didn't. Money did. Currently, TCU receives $1M/year in TV rights fees from the current MWC contract (which goes through 2016; no renegotiation going on there when games get a 0.14 rating on CBS Sports Network) If they played a game in the Big East, they would get approx. $10M/year in TV right fees from that conference's current TV deal which ends in 2013. By going to the Big XII, they will receive at least $15M/year in TV right fees for the next six years. The only thing which playing locally does for TCU is ensures that they will have Amon Carter seat 50,000 since they can easily get donors to pledge the money to get to that capacity as well as they know that they will have sellouts for conference home games.

College Station is just 90 minutes from Houston, the same virtual driving distance from Gainesville to Tampa, but you would not say that the SEC only gets Gainesville, would you?. Plus Houston is has the largest chapter for TAMU Former Students (alumni) in the state.

This is a mistake, IMO... West Virginia fits in perfectly with the SEC both culturally and geographically. One rejection doesn't permanently seal WVU's fate. It just means that at the time they applied there was insufficient interest on the part of the SEC. Nine of twelve schools must approve an application into the SEC. If eight schools had interest but four held off because they wanted to pursue the Mizzou angle, then things could change quickly if (and now I'm starting to believe when) Mizzou chooses to stay put in a purportedly stabilized Big XII. Their biggest issues are a small stadium so less $$ for the gate and that I am pretty sure that Stanford, Berkeley, USC, and UCLA do not want to be in the same conference with an institution whose six year undergraduate graduation rate (for all students) is just 26%! Moreover, I believe the biggest knock on BSU continues to be their relatively limited offering of athletics. They don't compete in a number of the "non-revenue" sports that happen to be popular on the other Pac 12 campuses. If I'm not mistaken, I believe that BSU would need to add some programs on the men's side which would then trigger Title IX obligations to increase the number of sports available to the ladies. Naturally, the only way an expansion of the athletic department could be financed is through significant increases to football ticket prices, and if the Broncos are going to find themselves in a significantly more challenging football conference, the question begs whether fans will want to pay a lot more to see a team whose chances to contend for a BCS bid may fall by the wayside in early October rather than the second to last weekend in November. However, Cincinnati has been rumored even more than Boise State, yet they offer only nine Women's sports; one less than Boise St. themselves

Their biggest issues are a small stadium so less $$$ for the gate and that I am pretty sure that Stanford, Berkeley, USC, and UCLA do not want to be in the same conference with an institution whose six year undergraduate graduation rate (for all students) is just 26%!

As others have stated, this is more about households than ratings, per se. aTm and Mizzou would add 11 million more households into the league and the SEC wants to have a larger TV contract that the Pac-12 just signed. More households will allow for networks to get more ad revenue as there is a larger TV footprint for live SEC events or even have a larger footprint in the event Slive starts a network similar to BTN. LeBron is a "frontrunner" in his fandom. Yankees, Cowboys...whoever was winning when he was growing up or who he saw covered on TV the most.

Got any updates for us? I'll find out what I can tomorrow. For now, this is all I got courtesy of Yahoo Sports. Big East CEOs OK commish to pursue expansion You realize that they talked about teams at the media days in Newport, RI in August, right? His "anchor" schools lied to him.

With the Tennessee AD saying that the SEC will not stop at 13 (Missouri), Texas may be relenting on adding TCU, and others. Personally, I still do not give this conference much time. From Dallas Morning News' Chuck Carlton:

C-USA and MWC are still discussing a football-only merger.

Because one team defines a conference. C-USA is a fairly solid mid major league even if they haven't been able to haul out the one elite team. Yes, The middle to bottom of both conferences are very comparable. the Top part of it is where they are worlds apart. So, who is C-USA's great white hope this season for a non-BCS birth buster?? Or is that dream dead already?..HaaHaha Only Houston has a shot to go unbeaten, but they give up 30 points/game. They do not play UCF in the regular season and only away game with any difficulty is @ Tulsa and since GJ Kinne has a torn MCL (currently out 2-4 weeks), and Damaris Johnson's suspension does not make them that tough.

A C-USA title game will never be played in JAX. Nobody wants to go there and they could never sell it out. When they palyed the title game in a more desirable city to visit (Orlando), they could only get 52,000 there and that was when UCF was in the game. It would look worse then when ACC title games there. It will be on-campus.

Its just disgusting anyway you cut it what's going on right now with college football. The enitre thing is being driven by greed. Just pure greed. Its not enough to be making $30 million a year. We gotta make $35 million a year and if it means we gotta screw over seven other schools to do it, then so be it. Meanwhile the NCAA is just sitting back twiddling their thumbs like they always do. No problem here, just business as usual. From them to look at this and feel there's not even a chance that schools are acting the least bit out of line means one of two things. One they are greedy, corrupt bastards who act in the best interest of collegiate sports in name only; are entirely self serving, and are nothing more then just yes men put there by the major schools to make sure the status quo is inacted so long as it benefits the big schools and is overturned when it does not. The other is that the NCAA is made up people underqualified to work as ditch diggers. People so dumb that the fact they can drive to work everyday is nothing short of a miracle that can only be explained as greatest amount of proof ever presented that god exists. One of those two must be true for the NCAA to feel that nothing out of the ordinary is going on, and that no potential for rules violations or downgrading the intregrity of the sport and of college athletics exists. Even not reading the story form The Atlantic Monthly, since 1984, SCOTUS made the NCAA a small part of the college football scene. They really cannot do much after that decision and the subsequent changes in NCAA bylaws since '84. Since then, they are not allowed to regulate the TV money teams receive. Then Notre Dame left the CFA for NBC and the SEC went directly to CBS and then Jefferson-Pilot for secondary (tier two) games.

Something we already know. Columbia Journalism Review: ESPN Obscures Its Own Role in the Conference Realignment Mess From the editorial: