Will Missouri and Auburn eventually switch divisions?

I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were a fan of either university.

Auburn has been actively campaigning for the move — most recently this off-season leading into the SEC’s Spring Meetings. Former head coach Pat Dye kicked things off, and AD Jay Jacobs, Gus Malzahn and even Bruce Pearl chimed in on the argument. Basically, it’s talking season without any football, and Auburn has realized the media will certainly talk about it.

Malzahn shared his thoughts earlier this year, expressing — along with everyone else — the geography of the move makes sense.

“You look at the map and obviously it makes sense,” Malzahn said. “There’s a lot more to it than just the map and all that.”

We’ve heard from the Auburn side, but Mizzou has been rather silent on the subject. AL.com’s John Talty recently caught up with Mizzou AD Jim Sterk about potential division realignment.

“I think we’re fine and like where we are at,” Sterk told AL.com. “There’s been no discussion within the conference and with the commissioner about anything different. Until that point, I’m not going to speculate. But I can say we like where we are at. We’ve got schedules out until 2020 in football, so it’s something that would take a lot.”

Of course Sterk and the Tigers like where they’re at. It’s the SEC East, and thus, they have a much better chance to win the weak(er) division. Should the Tigers head to the SEC West, it would be a much more brutal path to Atlanta. Remember, the Tigers won the SEC East in 2013 and 2014.

Sterk continued, “I don’t know all the reasons why but I think there’d have to be a lot of things that would have to happen for that even to be considered,” Sterk said. “Auburn and Alabama, they aren’t going to give up playing each other so how does that work?”

The realistic answer — and maybe the final answer — is that it won’t work. The SEC will preserve long-time rivalries as long as it possibly can until a much bigger shift, say conference expansion, were to happen.