It's certainly good for expanding the conference footprint and television markets. Gives us Kansas City and St. Louis. Plus, the Missouri journalism school is widely considered the best in the country, and now all the "Mizzou Mafia" grads are going to be SEC homers being pumped into elite writing and broadcast positions. However, I am a little concerned with the SEC adding two mediocre football programs. Let's face it, in terms of on-field accomplishments in the past third-of-a-century or so, A&M and Mizzou are basically in the same category as the two Mississippi schools.
It now makes sense for us to go to 16 teams, and since Missouri and Texas are at the far western edges of the conference, the next two teams will almost invariably be from the east coast, to keep geographical alignment in place between the divisions. I think we have to go out and grab two quality football programs. I'm thinking Virginia Tech and West Virginia. This would expand the SEC into the mid-Atlantic region, where it has been conspicuously absent. VT would give us the Washington DC market and have some spillover into the metro areas of neighboring state like Charlotte and Baltimore. West Viriginia has lots of alumni that take jobs in Pittsburg, Philly, DC, and the big three "C" cities in Ohio.
