COLUMBIA, Mo. • Mizzou's adventurous maneuver from the Big 12 to the Southeastern Conference is about many things.

"This move is the result of the university's detailed and thorough process of identifying the best opportunity for long-term stability in the future," Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon said in a statement Sunday.

Indeed, the Big 12 has been in near-constant tumult over much of the last 18 months as long-simmering issues bubbled to the surface in the realignment scramble spawned by Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany's statement in late 2009 that the league was studying expansion.

After Nebraska announced in the summer of 2010 it was leaving for the Big Ten and Colorado for what would become the Pac-12, a sense of peace briefly prevailed before all was undone by Texas A&M's issues with Texas' Longhorn Network and further ruptured by Oklahoma President David Boren's comments in early September that Oklahoma would explore options.

All of which, MU athletics director Mike Alden said Sunday, left MU considering such issues as who is at the table, how much they are really committed and whether all are being treated equally.

And it led, SEC commissioner Mike Slive said Sunday, to MU contacting the SEC "very early in the football season. We began some conversations."

In the fanfare of the announcement Sunday, no one wanted to talk much about an obvious corollary to the pursuit of stability: money.

But between what MU might face in exit fees from the Big 12, what it stands to make in the SEC and what it will have to upgrade to compete in the SEC, money, too, is and will be a factor going forward.

The Big 12 announced in September 2010 that Nebraska would give up $9.25 million of its final year of conference income and Colorado $6.86 million of its income after the league initially sought $19.4 million and $15 million per the formula in its bylaws.

The withholding from Texas A&M, also SEC-bound, has yet to be settled, and A&M president R. Bowen Loftin told the Post-Dispatch on Oct. 26 that he had suggested to MU chancellor Brady Deaton that the two institutions work in concert on the matter if MU were to leave.

It's not known whether Deaton has or will take up Loftin's offer, and on Sunday he said only that the matter had not been resolved and that MU understands the league bylaws "regarding some range of exit fees."

Last month, a Mizzou-produced document leaked to The Associated Press might have shed some light on that understanding. It said Mizzou could risk losing $25.9 million if it leaves next year and $10.4 million if it goes in 2013.

The same document also projected MU would make $17.26 million in conference-distributed revenue in fiscal year 2012 in the Big 12 and $19.25 million in the same time frame in the SEC.

It also suggested Missouri could make up to $12 million more a year in the SEC, which is in the third year of a 15-year television contract with CBS and ESPN that allows for "look-ins" for renegotiation.

Whatever the full basis of the reasoning, in part it's because the SEC distributes revenue equally as opposed to a model the Big 12 only now is changing, which distributed revenue based essentially on the number of television appearances made by individual institutions.

"One of the great hallmarks of this league is that when you're a member of the SEC, you are a member in every sense of the word. ... We share in just everything that we do in an equal way," Slive said, adding, "In our bylaws, there's about half a sentence about what it takes to leave. If you don't want to be with us, you don't have to be with us. And nobody left."

To be in the league, though, MU will have to ratchet up its athletics budget, which at about $65 million is in the lower third of the SEC.

And it would do well to add amenities and seats at Faurot Field, where the current capacity is just over 70,000 in a league that features five schools with a typically filled capacity of about 90,000 or more.

Alden on Sunday did not directly answer questions about whether MU already has initiated a campaign for that cause, saying only that the school may need to take its ongoing efforts and "turn that up even another notch."

Deaton referred to expanding facilities if the fan base "responds in a way that makes that worthwhile."