Late 2009, Big 10 says they’re going to consider

Posted on: June 8, 2023 at 12:43:57 CT

expansion. The sports world is on fire of talk that Mizzou will go. MO Governor says we should take more money from the Big 10. MU says they will investigate any possibility that makes economic sense without mentioning any specific league, but it’s obvious.
This goes on for months. Literally every MU fan assumes we’re going. The press assumes we’re going, local and national. It is completely illogical to think a phone call (at a minimum) did not occur between MU & the Big10.
May 2010, the ENTIRE sports world is blindsided when it is revealed that Nebraska is going.
Aug/Sep 2011, things start falling apart in the Big12-2or3 and MU approaches the SEC. ZERO chance we called the Big 10 at this time. Nobody believes that happened. Rumors about MU to the SEC begin almost immediately.
Nov 2012, MU SEC is announced.

Top secret negotiations/conversations are never documented. Doesn’t mean they didn’t happen.

There are two possibilities about Mizzou and the Big 10 conference.

1. They offered us membership and we did not like the terms and we declined it.
2. Discussions were held and the Big 10 never offered.
Why did they not offer? Maybe we made it clear we didn’t like the terms before it got to that point. Maybe we were slow playing the whole situation and they didn’t want to wait. Maybe one or both parties just didn’t like the fit.
Why would we have slow played the situation? Because not everybody at MU was on board with the move, not all fans were on board with the move, and a lot of people involved were still very focused and interested on saving the Big 12. We don’t know whether or not we did slow play it, but if we did, that would be the reason why.