SEC Coverage

— From ESPN's Kristi Dosh It's odd to see ESPN's sports business reporter passing on a report on ESPN by the Sports Business Daily, but the big four-letter really does keeps its business and journalism sides separate. Anyway, this is a huge payday for just one bowl game. If the pot gets split up evenly all around, that's $40 million to each conference, $4 million to each Big 12 school, and $2.86 million to each SEC school. Incidentally, that kind of math is what argues against Big 12 expansion in the future.

— From Chip Brown This quote could mean something or it could mean nothing depending on just who this "colleague" is. Don't bet on ever finding out this colleague's identity, though. As much as anything, Neinas is probably just trying to keep the conference's expansion cards close to the vest. For one thing, he likely won't be making any real decisions because incoming, non-interim commissioner Bob Bowlsby should be taking the lead on the issue. For another, things can get out of hand quickly. The real lesson the conference has apparently learned from the SEC is to go slowly and do everything you can to make it look like your expansion targets approached you, not the other way around.

— The SEC's P.R. guy Charles Bloom It took until 9:22 am ET for the SEC to respond to the Missouri mishap from last night, and this is what we got. I'm half surprised the SEC said anything at all.

— SEC Statement on Today's Meeting The SEC has apparently figured out that silence leads to rampant speculation and rumors, so it has been releasing statements like these following important meetings. If you're having trouble deciphering the code language used here, they talked about but didn't vote on expansion. This is in direct contrast to the Big East, which today chose to expand to 12 football teams today. If West Virginia and Louisville don't leave (both have been rumored to be potential Big 12 expansion targets), the conference will need to add six members by the time Pitt and Syracuse leave to maintain 12 members.

— Texas A&M apparently has the votes... I guess we'll find out fairly soon if they have a real invitation.

— SEC Has Announced Revised Fan Policy Not too long after revising its policy for credentialed media members, that tweet from the SEC announces that the conference has updated its policy for ticket holding fans too. Here is an interview with SEC Associate Commissioner of Media Relations Charles Bloom, who talks at length about the changing of the policy without giving up too many specifics. There's a lot of talk about the SEC's "intent," of which little apparently made it into the first release of the policy. It also sounds like there were an awful lot of chefs in the kitchen when they were cooking it up, it was thrown together rather hastily, and that (as suspected) they were really only concerned about game video rights. The only other interesting tidbit is that the SEC will not play policeman. Its partner in making the SEC Digital Network, XOS Technologies, will be on the hook for enforcing the policy. All in all it sounds like the conference doesn't really care much about social media, got duped by its media partners into drafting a draconian policy, and now is having to backtrack to something reasonable based on fan and media outcry.