With the season only days away, the subject of realignment and Texas A&M-to-the-SEC just won't seem to stay out of the headlines. For many reporters, local or national, this means even later nights and even earlier mornings spent tracking down the latest rumors regarding the delicate dance that schools are going through to join/leave/flirt with conferences.Like other reporters, I submitted several Freedom of Information Act requests to the public schools in the Big 12 on behalf of CBSSports.com earlier this month. Why? To see if I could get a clearer picture about what was happening behind the realignment curtain. While more and more school presidents and athletic directors are getting smarter about picking up the phone rather than leaving a paper trail about these matters, there's still plenty of information that has to travel to or from various .edu addresses around the league in regards to the Aggies possible departure.
Though I am not the only one to submit these requests, I did get an interesting call today from the legal office at one of the schools. Part of my request would be delayed because it had to be sent to the Texas Attorney General to make a ruling. Why, I asked, was this?
The Big 12 didn't like me taking a look at their business.
One of the things that I requested were any emails sent from schools to the league office with certain keywords. These emails are public record because they were from a public official at a... you guessed it, public institution and subject to open records laws. Of course, the conference office didn't see things that way. The Big 12 sent a notice to schools saying that they do not agree to the release of any of the information contained in the emails.
Sorry Dan Beebe, that's not going to fly.
The Big 12 is essentially claiming their emails contain trade secrets and they can't be released. A call to the league office for comment about the matter was not returned. It is not known what the folks in Dallas are trying to withhold but if Texas released the Longhorn Network's contract with third parties IMG and ESPN, you do wonder what it is the Big 12 is trying to hold back.
What happens now is the schools will gather all of the emails the conference wants withheld, will then send them to the attorney general, who will rule on whether they can be released. This will take some time of course.
And that's why the Big 12 is doing this. They want to keep some prying eyes out of their realignment business. It probably won't happen but at least they'll have some time to sort a few issues out.
They seem to be busy.
