re: aTm / Mizzou fans - Explain to us the tangible benefits of the AAU

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I was very successful in exposing that most who used the label had no idea what research was going on

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You clearly lack reading comprehension. Some posters listed research areas as opposed to specific research, because the only people who could tell you specific research being conducted at a particular school off of the top of their head are graduate students and professors at that school. I've already explained this twice, but you continue to be incapable of comprehending it.

The only thing you were "very successful" in was showing your unfathomable ignorance on anything related to research or academia in general.

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no one ever took the time to explain why Mizzou, with it's vaunted AAU membership, receives less USG funding than half of the current SEC member schools.

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That's because this is a very difficult question to answer. For one, new schools aren't added to the AAU very often, so it's possible that a school like Georgia could emphasize research and get more money than a current AAU school. There are a few current SEC schools that are close to AAU membership, which is one reason why TAMU and Mizzou were added: to help those schools gain acceptance.

Beyond that, the majority of research money is based on individual faculty efforts in writing grants; AAU affiliation doesn't guarantee funding, it simply increases the chances of faculty at those schools in getting funded. In addition, AAU affiliation increases cooperation between schools to land large grants by pooling together resources in multi-institution collaborations.

Also, levels of research funding directed to Tier1 universities will vary state-to-state. It's very possible that Georgia may receive significantly more money from their state than Mizzou. Likewise, not all research money comes from the govt, and the SEC schools may have more collaborations with industry than Mizzou. Larger institutions will have a larger faculty, and thus have more labs needing funding. Comparing Mizzou vs SEC in terms of enrollment and research-based faculty could shed some light on this. It's very possible that Mizzou brings in more research money per research faculty member than those SEC schools.

It's impossible to say for sure without seeing all the specific numbers and sources for research dollars at each institution, so that's why no one has answered your question. Feel free to do this research on your own, as I highly doubt any of us want to spend the large amount of time required to fully answer this question.