By ALAN HOSKINS, Kansan Contributor

Why, you ask, would Missouri ever leave the Big 12 for the Big 10?
   
Well, $12 million a year might make for a good starting point.

After two decades, the Big 10 has finally realized that it needs a 12th member. For some reason, the fact that with just 11 members, there can be only five conference games a week once the conference season gets underway leaving one member scrambling for a non-conference opponent in October and November never occurred to conference bigwigs.

Now, the Big 10 has made it known it is interested in adding a 12th member – and Missouri along with three eastern powers, Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Rutgers, are the leading candidates (since the most obvious choice, Notre Dame, refuses to give up its status as an independent).

Is Missouri interested in listening? Yes, according to the Governor of Missouri, the MU chancellor and Athletic Director Mike Alden if you read between the lines in a recent candid in-depth interview with Joe Walljasper, the sports editor of the Columbus (Ohio) Tribute.
   
Missouri, and most of the other North members for that matter, are not happy that TV money is not divided equally. This year, Alden estimates MU will receive about $9 million in TV money. Baylor will get even less ($7.5 million) while the rich get richer as Texas will take in $12 million,

But just to Missouri’s east, Illinois, a Big 10 member which MU goes head-to-head in recruiting the St. Louis area, will receive $21 million as part of the Big 10’s equal division of a $180 million TV package. That’s $12 million more than MU, which is tied into the Big 12’s $80 million TV pact.
 
Missouri is also frustrated by the fact that for the last three years, the Tigers have been sent to a bowl game lower on the Big 12’s picking order than their record warranted, i.e., Kansas getting an Orange bowl after losing to MU two years ago and this year when Iowa State (6-6) was invited to the Insight Bowl while MU (8-4) was shunted to the Texas Bowl. Also, Missouri was miffed by the lack of conference support when its soccer team did not get an NCAA invitation despite winning the Big 12 regular season title.

Were Missouri added to the Big 10, it would come with two major TV markets in St. Louis and Kansas City. However, it is not TV sets that’s the Big 10 is interested. Rather, its academics.

Noting that (former Big 12 Commissioner) Kevin Weiberg was quoted as saying “Rest assured, this will not be about athletics,” Alden said “Everybody in our world thinks this is about athletics but it is not. Conference realignments are always based primarily on athletics.

“From Weiberg, a guy that used to be our commissioner and the No. 2 guy in the Big 10, he’s got a pretty strong knowledge base. It has to do with similarities of institutions, similarities of academic mission, similarities of research, professional schools that they have, contiguous ideas, regionalization, things like that.

“The image of the Big 10, all schools are AAU (Association of American Universities) members,, like Mizzou is. There are only 34 public (universities) in the whole country that are part of that. Mizzou is one of those schools and that means nationally, academically, we’re seen as a really strong program, just like all of the schools in the Big 10 are. That’s a strength the Big 10 would have.”

So those are some of the reasons Missouri would consider leaving the Big 12 for the Big 10.I suspect, if Alden and MU had its druthers, it would stay if the Big 12 would take some major steps to equalize the playing field for the MU’s, K-States and Iowa States both financially and competively. Giving up its rivalry with KU would not be popular among the Tiger faithful although I suppose it could be continued on a non-conference basis.

One thing for sure. It’s going to be a hot topic for months to come. In the end, I don’t think it will happen.