SEC Talks Have Been Ongoing with OU and Texas, per Reports

Day 3 of the Oklahoma and Texas to the SEC firestorm started with further details leaking out through various sources.

The Austin American-Statesman‘s Kirk Bohls started the action off with an early morning report that the move is “almost done.” Bohls reports that it has been being worked on for “a minimum of six months.”

Perhaps the biggest piece to Bohls’ Friday report was that Texas A&M leadership was left out of the discussions and wasn’t told about the ongoing talks. When this story first started breaking on Wednesday, A&M athletic director Ross Bjork said the Aggies wanted to be Texas’ only representatives in the SEC.

Yahoo Sports’ Pete Thamel was next up Friday morning with his report stating the ACC and other leagues have gone through “back channels” to inquire about OU and Texas potentially flipping their perceived commitment to the SEC. Thamel reported OU and Texas were still expected to start the process of joining the SEC next week and that communication between those two schools and the SEC has been happening for “more than a year.”

Lastly, Stadium’s Brett McMurphy contradicted the “more than a year” reports, saying OU and UT reached out to the SEC in “late December/early January.” McMurphy’s source told him that the two programs have been in “lockstep” throughout the process of looking for a new conference.

So, the big takeaways from Friday mornings reports are:

• Next week seems like when this will formally begin to happen;
• This has been in the works for a while;
• Oklahoma and Texas have been united in their quest to find a new conference;
• This was done without A&M knowing about it to avoid a potential snafu.