Show-Me? Mizzou feels it has done enough to earn Big Ten invite - NCAA Football - CBSSports.com
A good article about Missouri's desire to be the Big Ten's 12th team by Dennis Dodd of CBSSports.com. I especially like this part:
"Mizzou is good, but is it Big Ten good? Specifically, is Missouri in Michigan's neighborhood academically and athletically? Certainly not. But neither does it consider itself 'worthy' of sharing the same conference with the likes of Iowa State."
I just enjoy hearing how every team in the Big XII doesn't even want ISU...hope the MAC is more understanding, Clowns!
Certainly no fan of Moo U. But get serious. Iowa State is an excellent academic institution, immensely suprerior to Mizzou. Iowa State is one of the 61 major research universities in the nation. Mizzou will require years of greater legislative support, expansion of programs and facilities, upgrading of its standards and quality of instruction & research to compare.
Indeed, outside of Texas & marginally perhaps TX A&M, Iowa State is a stronger academic institution than any of the other Big 12 schools.
Athletic comparisons are another matter. In several respects. First, the Clowns are NOT one of the better athletic programs in the Big 12, not by a long way (ironically, perhaps most competitive in some women's sports). Secondly, athletic comparisons of the Big Ten & Big 12 are a very mixed bag--extremes are the strength of the Big 12 in baseball, the Big Ten in wrestling. In the major/"revenue" sports, the balance changes year from year--recently the Big !2 has edged ahead of the BT in women's hoops, while at the same time the Big Ten is coming on stronger with more top competitors in men's basketball (close to restoring its long-time dominance, its historic status as chief rival to the ACC--Kansas is still the ONLY Big 12 team to win a national title, half have never made the Final Four; while five BT teams have national championships, three more have played for the national title, only NW has never been in the Final Four.
In football, where there is no national champion and never has been, the comparisons rest on superficial polls and reputations. But the Big 12 heritage is more years of Big Six & Big Eight & Southwest with their many mediocrities. Certainly there are more traditional powerhouses in the Big Ten, and the bottom half of the conference has almost always been stronger than in the Big 12--all those years when Kansas State was the worst major football program in the nation--unless Iowa State was....Baylor, TX Tech, Kansas, Mizzou, and not that often that Okie State or Colorado had their rare powerhouse teams.
Take ALL their teams into consideration, women included, and it is very difficult to show any sustained overall superiority of Mizzou athletics over than of Moo U.
