Two weeks ago, I personally filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with both Appalachian State and Georgia Southern regarding any documents they had pertaining to conference realignment.

Today, Georgia Southern sent me the documents I asked for. There are roughly 50 pages in all. Some of them are common press releases, others unexciting emails. There are a few, however, that were VERY interesting. None more interesting than the 2 pages I am about to show you.

This is an email dated Dec 22, 2012 @ 10:21 AM. I actually have this email multiple times at various stages of the “forwarding” process. I chose the one with the least amount of “Confidentiality” statements.

There are emails leading up to this where Karl Benson and new Georgia Southern AD Tom Kleinlein arrange meetings. This one is obviously a follow up to one of those meetings. The email itself isn’t what struck me. It’s the amount of talk about how the attachment was “confidential” (especially at later stages in the forwarding process) and of course the attachment itself:

The map shows the locations of every Sun Belt school…except that Appalachian State and Georgia Southern are added!

Is this a working plan for how the conference will look very soon? Is this just a mockup that they are using to throw around ideas? I honestly have no idea. But they went through great lengths to ensure everyone who read the email knew it was “confidential”. I guess they forgot about us pesky sports bloggers and our annoying FOIA requests.

That’s all for now. I’ll be releasing more documents from this FOIA request in the weeks to come. Some of them involve the MAC, others involve NMSU. Also I’m still waiting on Appalachian State to reply to its request, so stay tuned!

Don’t forget, for all the latest conference realignment news follow me on Twitter: @AppStateNation