Mizzou has SEC offer, but SEC willing to wait

The Southeastern Conference has an offer on the table for Missouri to join its league, and SEC officials are willing to wait for an answer from Missouri until the future of the Big 12 is decided.

That information has come to The Kansas City Star through a Mizzou booster who spoke directly to a MU official. Another source told The Star on Tuesday that an Oklahoma official had said the SEC is interested in Missouri.

MU chancellor Brady Deaton has gone on record numerous times that, as chairman of the Big 12’s Board of Directors, he is working on keeping the Big 12 together.

But with Texas and Oklahoma regents each authorizing school officials to look elsewhere on Monday, the prospects of a viable Big 12 without either or both of those schools would be in question.

“Apparently they’ve come to us,” the MU booster said of the SEC. “I’ve been told there is an offer on the table.”

The same source said it was the second time the SEC has made an overture to Missouri, the first coming last year.

“After the Big Ten thing started falling apart,” the source said of the summer of 2010, “they wanted to talk to us. We didn’t talk to them.”

The “legitimate interest,” the booster said, came at a point when remaining Big 12 members agreed to stick together in spite of Nebraska going to the Big Ten Conference and Colorado to the Pac-10 last year.

The SEC this afternoon issued a statement saying the conference has not extended an invitation to any school other than Texas A&M since it extended invitations to Arkansas and South Carolina.

“We would echo what the SEC statement said,” said Chad Moller, the assistant athletic director for media relations at Missouri. “We have not received an offer from any conference.”