Do whatever you need to do to make yourself feel better. I'll just look at the history rather than select # of years to prove a point.

My bad.

"Missouri’s $53.2 million athletics budget in 2010 would rank 11th in a 14-team SEC — ahead of Mississippi, Mississippi State and Vanderbilt." "Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana State, Florida, Auburn, South Carolina and Tennessee — raked in more than double the $25.4 million in revenue MU generated in 2010." And finally "Alabama poured $65 million into renovating Bryant-Denney Stadium last summer — the third major expansion in a dozen years." Your facilities are going to be right up there with Vandy and the Mississippi schools. Even Kentucky which is a basketball school is dumping $150M into their stadium this year.

But you are right about the second part, aTm while outspending Mizzou by about $16M would only rank one spot ahead of you in the SEC in spending! Seriously, its a crazy arms race down there and you guys are like 10 years behind the curve.

Nope. When all of the emotion settles down, we (in the corporate sense) actually should be able to discuss SEC/new Big 12 more sanely.

I honestly think this whole situation might end up in a win-win for all universities involved.

The issue is, how are you going to catch up? You're chasing schools that can throw around almost as much coin on training facilities (Tenn is opening a $48M football facility next year) as you spend on athletics as a whole on a year to year basis? A&M has almost a third more money to throw around on athletics than Missouri and they're going to only be ahead of Missouri, Vandy and the Mississippi schools if you join. Let me quote the great college football guru Bruce Feldman on this “You’re closer to a have-not than you are to a have in the SEC, where in the Big 12 you’re closer to the top than you are to the bottom of the batch.” I mean this sincerely and without venom, good luck with all that.

Perhaps they have more money to spend because they have better television contracts and aren't forced to make due with whatever crumbs are left over after Texas is done.

nice $300mil expansion Arky is starting...

those people are insane

Over 30 years. It's a master plan. Only confirmed upgrade is a Football office space.

I hope they bring in the guy who loves the red stapler. He's pretty funny.

shhhhh.....don't ruin it.

Mizzou won't be able to compete with their office space. Its like a corporate arms race. Arkansas is Staples, and Mizzou is Dunder Mifflin.

I don't think any Missouri fan worth their salt won't tell you EVERYONE (AD, coaching staff and fans) will need to step their game up.

We're potentially moving to the "big boy table" - and that will take a bigger commitment on everyone's part.

Having said that, there's a real possibility that our athletic budget could be +$15 with a move to the SEC. That's alot of coin YoY that can be put into facilities etc.

In my experience, the "tough" thing to do and the "right" thing to do are (in most cases) the same course of action. I don't view this potential decision for Missouri as anything but that......

From what I hear, the athletic department is fully aware of the need to play major catchup in the arms race and has been working behind the scenes to make sure there are pushes to get contributions from big donors and also an effort to expand the small donor base.

There are a pair of basketball boosters who live in Columbia (one is a bar owner, the other married into money) who supposedly are very excited about the prospect of playing in the same conference as Mike Anderson again and are ready to donate some big money.

I have a buddy who works in the fundraising office. He keeps hinting that there is "a plan" for Stan Kroenke's big donation (which I would expect to trump the donation of Bill Laurie for the basketball arena). It honestly wouldn't surprise me if that comes in shortly, either.

Everyone most certainly will have to step up, from the fans to the AD to the head coach on down.

You know what I don't get? Mike Alden. Aside from hiring Pinkel, you'd be hard pressed to list accomplishments. The basketball program has mostly been a fire drill aside from Snyder's loaded but underachieving early teams. But Alden got the biggest decision right, so he survives. Reminds me of Carl Peterson. He hired the right coach and lived a long time off getting that right, though his overall batting average was not so good.

Look at the basketball coaching search, humiliation, and the subsequent desperation hire. If his continued position isn't proof that football is about 80% of it...