So 103 years of tradition is bunk?

With the eleven universities in the Big Ten Conference likely to agree to a plan to add one or three more members in the near future, speculation in the media is turning widely to the prospect of Mizzou defecting from the Big 12. If such discussions transpire to where Mizzou does make the move to a Big Ten+2, they will leave behind a conference whose predecessor the Big Eight (formerly Big Seven, Big Six, and Missouri Valley) they helped form in 1907, along with Kansas, Nebraska, and Washington University in St. Louis.

Now while the Big Ten has a plenty of tradition as America's oldest collegiate athletic conference and serious academic acumen, Mizzou would be getting all this for the sake of milking more out of the St. Louis market:

• No guaranteed Border Showdown with KU. The MU-KU rivalry has its roots in the run-up to the U.S. Civil War and was one of the many spawns of a great American university tradition, Homecoming. In its place would be Mizzou's only current rivalry with a Big Ten school, Illinois, whose roots is exclusively in the fact that the biggest city on the Missouri-Illinois border is St. Louis. In football, this game is already set to expire after next season. Aside from this, Mizzou has no significant rivalry with any other Big Ten school, except Northwestern in the contest for best journalism school.
  
• Longer travel times. Instead of being the easternmost member of the Big 12 Conference, Mizzou would become the southernmost and westernmost of a larger Big Ten. Also, its longest trip won't be a 695-mile sojourn to Boulder to take on a so-so Buffalo squad, but an 800-mile odyssey to challenge Joe Paterno's vaunted Penn State Nittany Lions.
  
• One heck of a tougher schedule just to get into a BCS bowl. Instead of playing perennial powerhouses Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas, Mizzou instead goes up against Iowa, Penn State, Ohio State and Wisconsin. While a Big Ten+2 western conference might result in Mizzou often rising to the top for a new championship game, winning that championship game would have Mizzou going to Pasadena with a likelihood of getting speared by USC in the Rose Bowl.
  

But of course, this isn't happening tomorrow, and that's only from the football perspective. When factoring in all sports, the Big Ten offer more (12 men's, 13 women's) than the Big 12 (10 men's, 11 women's). In men's basketball, Mizzou would have to put up quite a fight against Tom Izzo's Spartans of Michigan State and typically tough teams at Wisconsin and Ohio State, of which only Wisconsin would be in a western division.

Unfortunate for Missouri tourism revenue, especially Kansas City, leaving the Big 12 for a Big Ten+2 would cause the state to lose its pivot point in attracting conference tournaments (because why would KU host such tournaments in Missouri?) and instead become a fringe area. Chicago's central location would be reinforced, with St. Louis likely to be seen as a bone thrown to the west when Minneapolis/St. Paul and Milwaukee won't do. It would be imperative for Mizzou officials, and by extension state lawmakers, to consider this when making statements regarding the prospect of Mizzou jumping conferences.

But this is all speculation. For starters, the Big Ten have to agree whether or not to seek a 12th school, or go further and expand to 14 or even 16. And then there are other schools they are destined to consider, likely Big East schools like Syracuse, Rutgers and Pittsburgh. And they just could find a way for Notre Dame to shrug off its staunch independent mentality and embrace a place in a historic conference (then again, I've been dreaming of a Notre Dame-Mizzou game for years now.)