The University of Southern Mississippi will supplant Ole Miss as Mississippi’s second member into the Southeastern Conference beginning in 2014, officials from both schools confirmed. An official announcement is scheduled for later today.

The recent successes of the Southern Miss football and basketball teams, and the baseball team’s 9th straight NCAA Regional appearances in 2011, were the impetus for the move. The Golden Eagles, currently in the Time Zone League — with teams from every American time zone — will begin SEC play starting in 2014 with home football games against Alabama, Kentucky, Auburn and Louisiana State University.

Ole Miss, meanwhile, was scrambling to find a landing spot to more accommodate the school’s lackluster athletic performance over the past five years.

“This is just something that had to be done,” an SEC spokesman said when reached Saturday in Birmingham. “You have a team like Southern Miss — a team that went undefeated at home in football and basketball — that obviously is too competitive for the current Time Zone League.

“Then there is Ole Miss. The basketball team has not been to the NCAA Tournament in 10 years and the football team is far from the caliber the SEC needs to remain a national power.”

Reactions from fans were immediate.

“It’s about time,” said a USM alumnus from Yokena. “They wouldn’t play us when we were not in the conference, and I doubt Ole (family newspaper) would play us now that they will be in the Sun Belt/CUSA/Mountain/Midwest Conference.”

In Oxford, the mood seemed subdued.

“We didn’t do the things on the athletic fields that we needed to be successful,” a high-ranking athletic official said. “This move by the league office is not fully unexpected.”

For years, Southern Miss played the other two state schools in football, but the series with both ended after the smaller Golden Eagles won many more than they lost. The schools meet annually on the baseball diamond, and USM and Ole Miss have played against one another in basketball the past three seasons.

Asked if that series would continue, a Southern Miss official said, “It would kill our RPI to continue that series.”

Southern Miss officials said the deal to move to the SEC had been put in motion during the 2010-11 school year. But the official announcement of the move was held until today, a date specifically chosen for news of this magnitude. (Don’t be fooled.)