(I think you can exhale. Much more detail and definitive confirmations coming on the website soon).

Though it appears extraordinarily likely WVU is headed to the Big 12, let’s allow ourselves an honest moment: Nothing is definitive until the press conference is over — and even then, I’d be inclined to exhale when the janitor puts the away the broom and turns out the lights. And pulls his key from the door and puts it in his pocket.

Nevertheless …

… let’s address a few things, beginning with this: It could implode. Applications and acceptances are nice, but conference moves are voluntary. The Big 12 could throw a Hail Mary and keep Missouri. Or Missouri could stay. There are a lot of elements and a lot of actors, and combined or individually someone or something might derail the aforementioned conclusion … as unlikely as that may see so late in this process. I was told both sides are prepping the announcement and the Big 12 and WVU will be smiling for cameras before long.

Let’s also admit this: This isn’t a surprise. There were rumblings about this for a while and rumors were a little stronger than just that. But at the root, this seemed feasible. I spoke to several people yesterday about this outcome and one made what I thought was a very good point: “There comes a point where people are putting quotes around logic.” Honestly, if Missouri leaves for the Big 12, what is the Big 12 going do to? It’s going to add. From where? The Big East. Who’s most  attractive and eligible in the Big East? WVU (and  Louisville). Little kids could connect these dots with finger paint.

Missouri remains a wild card here, but every available indication says the Tigers are out and heading to the SEC. Missouri’s chancellor, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Brady Deaton, left a meeting of the Big 12’s board of directors Monday night and offered, without any context, “I wish them the best and all that, so we’ll see where that goes.”

The leader of the interminably nomadic Tigers might as well have channeled another glamor cat, gone all Grizabella and sang a song about his Memory. “I must wait for the sunrise, I must think of a new life, and I musn’t give in. When the dawn comes tonight will be a memory, too, and a new day will begin.”

That new day may come soon. Missouri is too far down the road to come back to the Big 12 and Deaton will act on his own schedule. The Big 12 will follow and I see almost no way WVU would have to pay more than $5 million because, seriously, who’s joining the league and doubling the exit fee? That dubious decision still blows my mind. So the Big East saved face and showed solidarity with a unanimous vote that was, in the end, completely hollow and served a pointless purpose for eight days.

Deaton might wait until the end of the World Series to make his move so the headlines are not shared, of gifted, to the St. Louis Cardinals. He might wait until the end of the world, too.

Either way, isn’t everyone who is invested in this kind of obsessed with Missouri, an athletic department that hasn’t inspired this kind interest on the football field or basketball court? Explain to me how that is bad for recruiting and marketing and plain old popularity.

There might be some chivalry in this boorish brotherhood of college conferences, too. Missouri plays Texas A&M Saturday and the SEC commissioner, Mike Slive, who has been above the board in all his actions, might actually be waiting until after that game so the event is about the Tigers and the Aggies and a college football game with the 12th Man, a swaying student section and kissing coeds in College Station, Texas.

Inconceivable, I know, but why add a sideshow to a circus?

This is a circus, a story with staying power and an appetite for information that cannot be satiated. Part of it is the pace and the prognosticators and part of it is those CATS in Columbia, Mo., that make us think, “Every streetlamp seems to beat a fatalistic warning. Someone mutters and the streetlamp gutters and soon it will be morning.”