And then the SEC tells A&M...."Never mind...."

Update Monday, 6:54 AM CDT: Well, the saga continues...Multiple reports, spearheaded by Chris Brown at Orangebloods.com, indicate that yesterday's announcement by the SEC "reaffirming" their satisfaction with their current 12-team alignment, is posturing, and A&M's move is still going to happen.

Supposedly the announcement will come within the next 20 days, with yesterday's announcement giving SEC some public, "legal" distance from A&M's plans to defect from the Big 12. Some even suggest that an announcement from A&M that they will leave the Big 12, even without an existing formal invitation from another conference, may take place.

At this point, all we can do is watch and wait. - David


With all the diplomatic aplomb of an ill-timed belch, SEC leadership groin-kicked Texas A&M late this afternoon, voting not to extend the Aggies their heavily expected invitation to bolt the Big 12 and join the SEC.

Now, with A&M spending the weekend poising itself to make the grand announcement of their own independence from their hated Austin rivals and the broader Big 12 in general, A&M has the unenviable task of walking back home to the conference it hates, hat in hand, tail between its legs, trying to figure out a way to mend fences and reconstruct bridges it had spent the last week burning.

What does the SEC's sudden spurning of A&M's advances really suggest? Just as I suggested when this story broke, the SEC's quiet action in the midst of A&M's chest thumping was cause enough for A&M to be very careful. It was simple logic that the Aggies weren't going to be invited alone, implying another team would have to be prepared to drop the hammer and keep the SEC's competitive balance at 14 schools. That meant that it was entirely possible A&M was not the prime target in the SEC's scouting efforts - that, in reality, another team was targeted, and A&M was the team to balance. Today's blow to the head tells me that negotiations with the SEC's true intended fell through, and A&M was no longer needed.

In effect, A&M was played, played savagely, in an increasingly brutal game of take-no-prisoners conference management. The SEC knew that A&M was unhappy in the Big 12, unhappy with its perpetually second-tier status nationally, unhappy with the fact that reality of its program has never matched the ego of its fans. And the SEC took that unhappiness, slid it in its hip pocket, and played the Ags like a violin when the glimmer of hope for the team the SEC really wanted arose, then faded.

Who did the SEC really want? I obviously don't know for a fact, but its easy for me to speculate. And I speculate that, somehow, Mike Slive and the SEC found out that Florida State, if given half a chance, would join the SEC tribe and deliver one of college football's great rivalries - Florida-Florida State. Somewhere, in the midst of the last week, FSU either had change of heart, or communicated they were never really interested in the first place. Who knows. In the end, the SEC is unchanged, the Big 12 continues to persist.

And Texas A&M is still very, very unhappy.