Something's Not Right Here - Why Hasn't There Been More Made of This?

Real quick on a thought that's been in my mind over the past day or so. On Tuesday, it was reported that Missouri had been extended an invitation to the SEC.

The Birmingham (Ala.) News reported later on Tuesday that the SEC and Missouri have “informally agreed that, barring new developments, the school will join the league and that Auburn University will move to the SEC East Division.” The report cited two people familiar with the discussions, adding that, “(a) majority of presidents has endorsed the informal agreement.”

But on the same day, Missouri and the SEC office shot those reports down:

On Tuesday afternoon, the SEC issued a statement saying the conference has not extended an invitation to any school other than Texas A&M since it extended invitations to Arkansas and South Carolina. SEC associate commissioner Charles Bloom would not comment when asked whether the SEC and Missouri have discussed realignment.

MU officials had a similar response.

“We would echo what the SEC statement said,” said Chad Moller, Missouri’s assistant athletic director for media relations. “We have not received an offer from any conference.”

In the article, the source of the supposed invite was a "Missouri booster who had spoke directly to a Missouri official". Talked to a guy who had talked to a guy. And I guess that's fine, assuming that the reporter (Mike DeArmond) had a good history of trusted, accurate information from this booster.

So, did this happen or didn't it?

I was listening to Paul Finebaum's program Tuesday afternoon (big surprise, right?), and Paul was taking the pinata bat to Missouri and poking fun of the SEC office for running from this report and denying any such agreement. I've also been reading Outkick the Coverage pretty regularly (I know some of the guys there... disclaim, disclaim), who have made the claim that the leak of the Missouri-SEC invitation really "pissed off" the SEC.

Did it really?

I only ask that because there doesn't seem to be any real 'proof' of that. Doesn't really seem to be any established 'proof' that there is/was ever an official/unofficial. One thing's for sure - there is a lot of confusion.

I just did a Google News search, "missouri sec". Check out the headlines:

On this page, no one really seems to be on the same page.

I don't know if a leaked announcement "pissed off" the SEC office or not. It just seems a little incomplete to make that claim. But I will defend OKTC to the extent that they are the only ones really going bare-bones with opinion and providing alternative speculation on how things could play out. I'm down with all of that. Just not down with reporting - if that was the intent - that the SEC got "pissed off".

Seems a little too easy for me to just say that. I'd need to get some validation on that before I'll believe it.

But even in the mess of it all, it's curious in that there hasn't been anyone yet (where my Yahoo! boys at?) to pick up on this item. Did Missouri actually get an invite? Was it rescinded by the SEC? What really happened here, and will we ever really know?

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