Nov. 7, 2011
Official Announcement: Missouri to join the SEC
Vanderbilt Vice Chancellor David Williams addressed Missouri becoming the 14th member of the Southeastern Conference during his media briefing Monday afternoon in McGugin Center. 
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Vice Chancellor David Williams
On the addition of Missouri to the SEC:
“The presidents and chancellors of our member schools are the ones that vote on admissions into the SEC. They have been having on going meetings as it relates to the 14th team. Sometime over the weekend they had a vote, and obviously they voted unanimously to accept Missouri. That was done after a fairly lengthy due diligence as it relates to Missouri’s position in the Big 12 and their exit from the Big 12. That was announced on Sunday, as I am sure you all know, and as of July 1st, 2012, Missouri will be a part of the SEC. We will, as we have done with Texas A&M, actually invite their athletic director to all of our upcoming meetings as athletic directors, and we have one scheduled in December. We may have one scheduled now, for scheduling purposes earlier, but they will be part of that and, of course, now what we have to go to is to looking at our schedules in all of our sports and sort of now figure out how we integrate two more teams in. Once Texas A&M was in, we were sitting around, and we had a bunch of drafts for 13 team schedules. Once the Missouri thing started to heat up, we kind of put those in the drawer for a while to see what would happen, and so now we will go back and look at how we basically integrate two more teams, as opposed to one more team, into our 2012 season, and from my understanding it will begin in 2012.”
On putting Missouri into the SEC East:
“I don’t know. No one has told me that. I know I read that and I know that probably makes some sense, but we haven’t been told exactly who will be the 7th team in the East yet. Texas A&M is going in on the West, so either Missouri will go in the East or they will move another team over. I think probably from what everybody thinks of it, it makes sense for Missouri to come in, but we haven’t been told that yet.”
On possibly playing nine conference games (football):
“Well, we are going to play 12 football games, and quite honestly, and I think Coach agrees with me, we will play whoever we have to play. We are not going to be choosy on that. It is my understanding, from our last conversation that we had that we were not having a discussion about 9 conference games, so for right now, I am under the opinion that we are going to stay at 8 conference games. If they add 9 conference games, we will play 9 conference games. Right now, my understanding is we are going to stay at 8, which means you would play 6 in your division and 2 across division. So you would go from 5 and 3, to 6 and 2. So, I have not heard anything to suggest that we would be moving to 9 conference games. I know other conferences have done that, but I think our sort of thought, and once again, the presidents voted them in and they may have had a discussion that we are not privy to right now, but certainly the last discussion I had with anybody, of all of us, and that was when we knew Texas A&M was coming, and then we at least anticipated that by 2013 we’d have a 14th team, we weren’t really looking at a 14th team for 2012, or didn’t think we would, but at that point in time, we were all basically under the impression that we would stay at 8 conference games even when we got to 14. So, I am never going to say never, but I would be surprised if we’re going to 9 conference games, but if we do we will play them.”
On personal thought of 9 conference games:
“It depends on who we have to play! No, I think 8 is fine, but like I said, if we go to 9, we’ll play 9. Our view of it is, our job is to prepare a team and prepare kids to basically beat whoever comes out on the field to play against us. We are going to play 12 football games, so it is what it is.”
