Air Force 9 9.09%

BYU 32 32.32%

Boise State 24 24.24%

Cincinnati 32 32.32%

Colorado State University 18 18.18%

EbolAIDS 15 15.15%

Houston 23 23.23%

Marshall 5 5.05%

Memphis 16 16.16%

New Mexico 3 3.03%

SMU 7 7.07%

University of Central Florida 18 18.18%

University of Connecticut 6 6.06%

University of South Florida 8 8.08%

Other (List) 8 8.08%

That’s a zero sum game from any particular college perspective and in no way no moves Missouri up the ladder in and of itself.
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You said you have to learn to cheat better. My point is that, what used to be considered cheating, is now legal.

Cheating is obsolete.
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Wrong.

Schools can, and have, engage in bidding wars for players. All out in the open.

Mizzou not good at that yet? Guess you need some alumni with deeper pockets.
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So is cheating, outside of the fake moral high ground where we pretend the only schools that cheat are the schools who get caught cheating (much less the fake integrity of looking down on schools that give athletes money while the NCAA makes millions off those athletes, then joining another conference for only monetary reasons).
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NIL is relatively new, so it remains to be seen how it plays out. But I really don't see how this benefits Mizzou vs any other wannabe football school that's not particularly high profile as far as nationally televised games.

:-)
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All of the college rankings is a zero sum game.

A bunch of schools aren't suddenly going to be elite because they joined one of the two power conferences. Fans seem to have a tendency to overlook that.
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But in some ways, it probably would have been better if football and basketball were not part of college.

The money has made a huge mess of it.
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Yeah, that's what makes all of these narratives completely pointless.... everyone is purely guessing the B1G and SEC will be these 32 team conferences or whatever. People assume joining one of those conferences will immediately improve recruiting and what not, but you're still competing with the same schools you were competing with before.

Then you have the really obvious variables like hiring competent coaches and administration and so forth... and by the time you might start seeing benefits of that extra money and whatever other benefits actually come to fruition, who the hell knows how you're aligned within a larger conference, if playoffs expand or stay the same, etc.

And 10 or 20 years pass and some schools will figure out the money grab isn't worth it and will look elsewhere and we'll start the cycle over again because we're fucking idiots.

The athletic departments are largely just along for the ride of the money grab.
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Pretty sure the US is the only country in the world that does it this way.

It makes a lot of sense in terms of wanting kids to go to college and most athletes are actually there for school... but yeah, mixing the two and pretending it's all about the kids while there are billions of dollars at stake is really dumb.
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I don’t agree with that.

For every kid who goes to the NBA or NFL, there are 20 kids who do not go pro, but have gotten a free ride college education from a D-1 school.

Many of those kids would never go to college if they instead had gone into a semi-pro developmental league for a few years after high school.
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Mizzou will end up exactly as we predicted, another carbon copy of South Carolina who hasn’t done diddly dick in 30+ years in that league. Or Arkansas, neither has ever won the league and neither ever will. At least Arky has had some national stage success in hoops which South Carolina + MU won’t

At least they will all have the same thing keeping them going: “conference Pride”
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The system works great for 99% of student athletes. It is the 1% that were restricted by the cap on monetary earnings.

Most student athletes graduate with a degree thanks to college athletics.
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The only embarrassing schools on there are Notre Dame, Tennessee, Arkansas, Pitt, Nebraska, Miami, UCLA, and Washington.

Everyone else is pretty much breather wins and historically poor programs.
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Yeah but other countries instead have kids go into the FIFA system and the corruption in that makes our colleges look like child's play
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I thought June was "Conference Pride" month, but they're still here. Loud and proud banging that drum for their betters.
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