After the SEC office refused to make an official comment this afternoon on the press release by Mississippi State regarding the recruitment of Cam Newton, several stories tonight have SEC spokesman Charles Bloom making a brief statement tonight. According to USA Today:
SEC spokesman Charles Bloom confirmed MSU's account. He also said there was no mention of the reported conversations in either of the school's reports to the league. He declined to comment further.
Emphasis added by me, obviously, but nevertheless that is quite interesting. In effect, after initially refusing comment, the SEC spokesman tonight says that Mississippi State did not mention any of the alleged conversations by Cam and Cecil Newton in either their January or July report to the SEC.
Considering that Joe Schad's "two sources who recruit for MSU" are quite obviously two MSU coaches, I find that to be a very interesting omission, and seemingly there could be some conflict between Schad's report and Bloom's statement tonight. Having said that, I can think of two scenarios that could possibly make both stories mesh: (1) MSU was not aware of the conversations until after their second report in July, or (2) MSU went over the SEC office and submitted it all straight to the NCAA (and that, I think, is a violation of SEC bylaws in its own right). Are either of those two things likely to have happened? Your guess is as good as mine.
Final question: after refusing to make any comment whatsoever on this whole fiasco, which will be entering its second week as of tomorrow night, why would the SEC spokesman come out randomly tonight and make this one very narrow statement confirming MSU's account while at the same tonight denying the inclusion of reported conversations, the source of which is pretty clearly two members of the MSU coaching staff?
Addendum: I just remembered that Charles Bloom is pretty active on Twitter. Since the Cam Newton news broke last Thursday night, he's tweeted on a variety of subjects -- Nascar, Homeland Security, chinese food, SEC TV schedules, SEC website updates, etc. -- but not a word yet on the ongoing Newton melodrama. Admittedly it's a bit of a hybrid Twitter account focusing some on official business and some on more personal subjects, but even so nothing on the Newton investigation, past or present.