Missouri SEC Expansion: When Will Realignment Madness Finally Stop?

Imagine someone in the year 2009 taking a time machine to present day and scanning college football's landscape.

Where we're going, we don't need structure.

There has always been some moving and shaking in college football, but the last two seasons have seen schools transfer conferences at an alarming rate.

The recent debacle with the Big 12 and The Longhorn Network has sped up the whirlwind of chaos we see before us.

As Texas A&M is getting set to join the SEC after being added in September, the latest school to be nearing an exodus is Missouri.

Per Pete Thamel of The New York Times, "a university official with direct knowledge of the situation" recently said Missouri's application for membership to the SEC is “inevitable and imminent."

Combined with Texas A&M, Missouri would make the SEC a 14-team conference (the conference's preferred structure) and would leave the struggling Big 12 at nine teams. That would lead the Big 12 to adding one or three more programs to get to a 10-team or 12-team conference.

Remember the days when conference solidarity reigned supreme? When even the smallest conference rivalries were honored and upheld?

Well, those rivalries are still around, but they are diminishing quickly. The days of making sense of why this is all happening are over. The days of blaming The Longhorn Network are over. All we can do at this point is hold on for dear life and hope we don't get thrown off the never-ending carousel, along with our favorite programs.

The Big 12 is hurting, the Big East is questioning the meaning of life, and the SEC and Pac-12 appear as solid as ever.

If/when Missouri leaves the Big 12, the only thing we can be certain of is that uncertainty is just around the corner.

So embrace it, college football fans.

Accept it.

We're all in this together.