Everybody point and laugh at Texas A&M

Well ... this is awkward:

The Southeastern Conference is not extending an invitation to Texas A&M to become its 13th member but isn't ruling out adding the Aggies in the future.

University of Florida president Dr. Bernie Machen said the conference's presidents and chancellors met on Sunday and "reaffirmed our satisfaction with the present 12 institutional alignment."

In other words, "Thanks for playing and drive home safely to your jilted and bitter family." How humiliating for A&M.

I assumed that with both A&M and the SEC being so publicly open about the situation, the vote was just a formality. Not so much. The only logical explanation I can come up with for the last-minute chair-pull is that the presidents wanted a more certain long-term plan than "let's just take A&M and then see who else wants to come down the road." Maybe they'll start up the realignment talk again in the offseason when they can negotiate with more than one team at a time and see if an A&M-Florida State package deal (or something equally enticing) can be arranged. Bringing in, say, Texas A&M and Missouri seems like expansion for the sake of expansion, and nobody wants to share their dolla dolla billz with people who aren't bringing any additional money to the table.

As for the Big 12 ... man, I dunno. This seems like the equivalent of finding out (in very public fashion) that your moderately hot girlfriend is cheating on you but knowing that you're not that attractive and if you dump her, you won't be getting anything better and may very well spiral into a complete breakdown. My guess is that everybody puts on a brave face and pretends to be content until whenever this situation crops up again (and it will). On a related note, to be a Texas fan today would be flat-out awesome -- I'm soooo looking forward to Prevail and Ride's MS Paint storyboard.

What a weird ending to a weird week.