SEC Accidentally Welcomes Mizzou

MIAMI (CBSMiami.com) – For weeks, the University of Missouri has been rumored to become the newest member of the Southeastern Conference.

Those rumors were accidentally confirmed by the SEC overnight Thursday when the conference posted a full story welcoming the Missouri Tigers to the SEC.

The story, gives details of how the school will join Texas A&M as the SEC's newest members and that both schools will be participating fully starting July 1, 2012.

• Click here to see a screengrab of the story. (source: rockmnation.com)

Also, the story had links to other articles about the Tigers including an analysis of Missouri basketball, how homecoming started at Mizzou, and a take written by Tony Barnhart on Mizzou coming to the SEC.

The story also took time to mention that Mizzou is one of only 35 schools that are members of the Association of American Universities.

The article was quickly pulled down by the SEC Digital Network, but not before the proverbial cat was completely out of the bag.

Mizzou to the SEC has been the worst-kept secret in college football.

The Tigers have been dotting the I's and crossing the t's on all aspects of the move before officially withdrawing from the Big XII.

But given that the SEC has already put together material welcoming the Tigers to the conference, it's likely just a matter of days until Mizzou is the SEC's 14th member.

Once Mizzou joins the SEC, it will become a member of the eastern division and have games against Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Tennessee, South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia.

Mizzou will also likely have one annual game from a western division team, likely to be Texas A&M or Arkansas.