Yesterday afternoon news officially broke that ESPN had signed Paul Finebaum to a five year contract. The deal calls for 100 TV appearances a year and a simulcast of Finebaum's radio show on the upcoming SEC Network, set to debut in August of 2014.

It's a smart decision that fills up several hours of programming year-around on the upcoming SEC Network. Putting radio shows on television works pretty well already and is a cost-effective duality. ESPN pioneered the strategy in sports with multiple shows now airing daily and NBC and CBS have followed up on the decision, placing Dan Patrick and Tim Brando front and center on the NBC Sports Network and the CBS Sports Network. It would be a pretty big shocker if Fox didn't also have a radio show on television when FoxSports1 and FoxSports2 debut this August.   

But the biggest aspect of this deal is the message that the SEC is sending to the college sports universe. 

Last night we threw a Halloween Party. There were lots of good costumes, but there was only one truly great costume. Ben Johnson, a West Virginia fan who has previously written for the site and blames me for WVU not getting the SEC bid, showed up in a costume to rival all costumes. He and his girlfriend, a doctor at Vanderbilt, brought down the house when they rolled in dressed as Glen Rice and Sarah Palin. She clearly looks a bit like Palin, especially when winking as she does in the photo, and he bought the Glen Rice jersey and modified it with both their last names on the back.

Let's not kid ourselves, this is pure genius.

I know there are lots of other great costumes out there for this year's Halloween so get them to me if you can. I've got the contact information below. In the meantime, bow down before the greatest personalized jersey since before the NFL stopped blocking Ron Mexico on Mike Vick jerseys.

Meet the throwback Palin Rice Michigan basketball jersey.

Arkansas's Marquel Wade delivered one of the dirtiest hits of the college football season against Vanderbilt punt returner Jonathan Krause. As if this hit -- which knocked Krause from the game -- wasn't bad enough, Wade then stood and celebrated the hit. He continued his celebration on the sideline. Wade was ejected from the game for the hit and as he left the field he taunted opposing Vanderbilt fans. Wade may very well end up with further suspension from the league. In the meantime, in the height of homerism, Arkansas's radio broadcast referred to this hit as "inadvertent contact."

Inadvertent?

Judge for yourself.

For many cigar smoke is a reminder of a wedding consummation amongst groomsmen or some chubby man trolling around the neighborhood with a dog that's much too small for him, but for me it's the nosebleed section of Sanford Stadium where my dad and I once had season tickets to UGA games and sat on aluminum bleachers that got so hot in the sun that if your shorts weren't long enough, the bottoms of your thighs would start to burn like pieces of white chicken meat tossed on top of a grill, and the man who sat in front of us in those seats had a face like Mr. Edwards from Little House on the Prairie and puffed away from the first sick 'em to the final second of every home game.

He puffed through cupcakes like the Western Carolina Catamounts and powerhouses like Clemson and Auburn, and no matter what the temperatures hit in late August and September, he kept blowing heat out of that sun baked roll of tobacco leaves that sat in his mouth like a thumb with no hand; and with every game, we breathed in the smoke like it was good for us. The year was 1991, the start of the Ray Goff era and the descent of Georgia football.

Today the Big 12 officially announced West Virginia as the conference's tenth member. You can read the Big 12's release here. (Yes, this one was intentionally released). While the Big East remains insistent that the 27 month exit will govern, West Virginia, as OKTC has told you multiple times, is effectively calling the Big East's bluff. The Big 12 release specifically says West Virginia will commence play in 2012. "The Big 12 Conference Board of Directors have voted unanimously to accept West Virginia University as a full conference member effective July 1, 2012. The Mountaineers will begin competing in the Big 12 beginning with the 2012-13 athletic season."  

The Big 12 release also informs you of something OKTC has been saying for over a month, the Big 12 will be playing with ten members. Which school is absent from the ten school conference list in the West Virginia release? Missouri. Which means, as we've been telling you for two months, Missouri will be the SEC's 14th team and commence play in 2012. All that remains now is legal wrangling over exactly what the penalties will be for leaving conference members. If the Big East is smart, it will seek the outcome I laid out yesterday in the Travis Compromise (many of you also suggested Mizzou Compromise).

In what may go down as the most ridiculous aspect of conference realignment, the SEC had everything prepared on their website to announce Missouri as the 14th member of the conference set to begin play in 2012. Those pages weren't supposed to be accessible by the public. Except they were. Uh oh. The publication date on the article's release is 10/22, this past Saturday. But the article references Monday as the date of the official announcement. So whether that was supposed to be this past Monday or this coming Monday, OKTC became aware of the posting this evening thanks to a Twitter tip. Honestly, you guys are our eyes and ears. I read everything you guys send me, even the "your gay" jokes.

Around 10:30 PM a Mizzou follower who requested anonymity tipped me off to the existence of these pages on the SEC Network.

He said he was tipped off by a posting on this message board. 

Multiple Missouri fans have also emailed saying a poster on their message board became aware these pages existed when he searched "Missouri" on the SEC website.

Regardless of how the pages became available, it's a major goof. And one I knew that the SEC would immediately seek to rectify once I requested a comment from the league office.

Before I posted this column I also tweeted out the link for all of you to see. The SEC quickly took down the pages -- confirming it was legit -- but I've reproduced all of the text for you below. Friday morning SEC spokesperson Charles Bloom commented on the matter via his Twitter account: "Web vendor made mistake. No agreement between SEC and Missouri.”

This is the modern day version of the dog ate my homework.

The key question that hangs over SEC realignment now is what, if anything, changed to keep this from being officially announced already? The second key question? What are the legal implications of this degree of coordination existing while Missouri is still officially a member of the Big 12? (Also, is Missouri still a member of the Big 12? Could the Tigers have super secretly withdrawn?) The SEC would likely argue that this was merely an internal public relations release, but in front of the wrong Texas jury this could be a hundred million dollar mistake by the conference. Somewhere Ken Starr is smiling.

The Big 12 and the Big East are like the two drunkest, most desperate people at the bar trying to hook up. It's never pretty. One day after it was clear that West Virginia was on the last helicopter out of the Big East Saigon, it suddenly wasn't clear at all after reported phone calls from Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell to Oklahoma and Texas Tech leaders. You knew at some point that truth would become stranger than fiction in the conference realignment mess. You just didn't expect for United States senators from West Virginia to make statements like these:

"If someone as U.S. Senator interfered after the process took place, then that's wrong and unacceptable," West Virginia's Senator Manchin said. "If a U.S. Senator has done anything inappropriate or unethical to interfere with a decision that the Big 12 had already made then I believe that there should be an investigation in the U.S. Senate."

And with these quotes the conference realignment male soap opera, turned into a script so insane even Latin American telenovellas would reject it as unbelievable.

At this point, there is only one logical conclusion to conference realignment: After a two year investigation Baylor president Ken Starr will be impeached for having an affair with an intern.

This week Vinnie Verno is dressing up as a bookie for Halloween, breaking down Missouri vs. Texas A&M based on the hotness of their girls, and giving you a video that perfectly illustrates the beating Alabama delivered against Tennessee.

Confession: I replayed Teach Me How to Gundy several times.

Meanwhile, if you want a real oddsmaker to rely on, you need to check out my guys at Prediction Machine. They're 80% against the spread in NFL games this year. 80%!.

You can go to his site here for free picks, fantasy news and whatnot. He's hitting right at 80% against the spread right now.

Late last night the toddler Halloween costume of the year arrived on my Twitter feed. I'm not going to lie, I thought my one-year old's toddler Darth Vader was going to be pretty hard to beat. Then this showed up on my Twitter timeline. This is even better than Deadspin's Baby Mangino from a couple year's back. I've emailed with the mother of Toddler Dooley -- here a hint he's got the middle name Neyland!-- and I'll have more information about the costume up soon. But as I run off to the radio show I wanted to go ahead and make y'all's day.

Okay, here's the details from mom Cortney on Toddler Dooley:

"So excited that you love my son's halloween costume!   I couldn't find orange toddler pants, or a T polo. So I rit-dyed some of his khaki pants, and found an iron-on T logo. I ordered a superman black vinyl wig, and borrowed my husbands xbox controller.  I attached the controller to a little radio to clip onto his belt.  Completed the outfit with a brown belt and brown shoes.  My son thinks he is some serious hot stuff in his outfit!!   How cool would it be to have some Derek Dooley autographed orange pants for my son's Tennessee room ?!"

Cortney, I think I speak for every college football fan in America when I say: you've won Halloween.

...

By the way, the fact that every sports fan in America isn't on Twitter is one of the most amazing fan fails I've seen this side of assaulting a first base coach. (If you're confused about Twitter just follow me and then follow all the people I follow. You can supplement from there, but it's a good base).

Our beaver pelt trader of the week? Is it even a question? Toddler Dooley.

On to the mailbag.

Two Conference Games to Watch   Florida vs Georgia (3:30 ET/CBS) – History battles reality on Saturday as two teams headed in seemingly different directions meet in Jacksonville. One has owned the series while the other has owned the last month of the current season. Both teams enter the game coming off bye weeks, but that's where any recent similarities end. Florida enters riding a 3-game losing streak, having suffered a trifecta of defeats against the SEC West for the second time in as many seasons. The Gators lost to Alabama, LSU and Mississippi State in 2010 before getting well against the Bulldogs. Georgia, on the other hand, is playing for a possible SEC title berth having run off five wins in a row since falling to Boise State and South Carolina to open the year.

We all know the history here. Florida has dominated Georgia over the past two decades the way no other team in history has. When the Gators are good, they beat Georgia. When the Gators are bad...they still usually beat Georgia. In fact, they have lost only three times in this annual series since 1990. That's a long time, but has to seem much longer to anyone in Athens. This is a year where everything seems to be lining up for a Georgia win, but then again, we've seen this movie play out before. In 2002, 2003 and 2005, Georgia enjoyed great success and claimed at least a share of the SEC East. Each year, they fell short against Florida. Will this be another season where they head to Atlanta despite falling to their bitter rival?

I grew up a massive baseball fan. Every morning I devoured the local sports section to read the box scores. Every night I watched my team, the Cincinnati Reds, on our local Nashville Fox affiliate or I'd crank up my dad's ancient radio and listen to the AM broadcast of the Reds' games. I collected baseball cards, played baseball, often watched the Cubs on WGN and the Braves on TBS, followed the Reds' prospects through their Triple A affiliate in Nashville, the Sounds, and stayed up late to watch baseball highlights. Each summer my dad and I would make a pilgrimmage to Cincinnati to watch the Reds play. One year we went to spring training. I was a huge baseball fan and everyone I knew in Nashville was also a huge baseball fan.

Indeed, Nashville residents dreamed of one day having a major league team. 

We had no professional sports teams back in those days and baseball was a tantalizing dream. Back in the early 1990's, when baseball last expanded, Nashville even "sold" 17,000 season tickets as part of an application to join the majors. A local group even selected potential sites for stadiums and did mock-ups of what a stadium would look like. The city was never really in the running for a franchise and when the Marlins and Rockies were added to the national league, local fans returned to rooted for the three largest fan bases in the city: the Atlanta Braves, St. Louis Cardinals, and Cincinnati Reds. Each team was around a four hour drive from the city and those of us who were baseball fans made do with a yearly trip or so to see our favorite teams play.

As a fan, I always liked the University of Tennessee more, but Cincinnati Reds baseball was a close second for my passions. I followed the NFL and the NBA, but not as aggressively as I followed college football, college basketball, and baseball. Then came the baseball strike in 1994. I was 15 years old and just getting close to college age. That fall with no baseball playoffs to watch I gave myself over to college football, the NFL, and the NBA. 

Then something strange happened. 

I never came back to baseball.