I completely disagree on booting Mizzou and that they don't fit in. Just in case you're ONLY looking at football, UF is 5-6-0 against them since they came into the SEC and is 2-3-0 vs ATM.
Mizzou is a premier addition academically and strong in all sports whereas ATM is meh academically and meh in all sports.
Are you a Mizzou fan? If so, you're one of the few. They don't bring the same viewership as A&M and have correspondingly dramatically lower financial support and game attendance, at least in football, and football is what pays the bills. Basketball pays for itself and everything else is going to continue to lose funding as NIL increasingly requires schools to pour football revenue back into football instead of spreading it around to other sports.
A&M's biggest historic rival will be joining the SEC very soon (Texas) and another is already here (Arkansas), and they've made strong rivalries since they came in (LSU and now likely Bama as well). Mizzou's only historic rival that will be coming over is Oklahoma, with their other rivals living in the Big 10 or Big 12, and they haven't managed to really foster any since they've joined the conference. If they left tomorrow, no one would really miss them.
The clear idea is to create a football super conference. Mizzou doesn't feel necessary to that undertaking the way A&M does.
If you want to talk about only two divisions (
which won't happen IMO) then perhaps a quick glance at the map will show that we should split the two Alabama schools and keep everything else as is. Just add Texas and Oklahoma to the West and then turn the white line down between Bama and Auburn...
View attachment 45020
Agreed, two divisions won't happen once more teams are added. The SEC has made it pretty clear this off-season that expansion will mean the end of divisions.
Now, if you want to rearrange the teams by adding some SOUTHEASTERN powerhouses like Clemson or Va Tech and then losing Mizzou, maybe I could agree with that.
That was my thought. Either you swap Mizzou for Clemson OR you keep Mizzou and add Clemson + someone else. My thought was Oklahoma State since Oklahoma is coming, but VA Tech would also be a good accompaniment to Clemson. You wouldn't want to just add Clemson because then you'd have an odd number, which makes scheduling a hassle.