Complete 'Nobody' Broke the News That USC Was Heading to the Big 10

Nearly every major sports story is broken by reputable reporters who diligently track down leads and check with high placed sources before the news is posted.

Jeff Passan, Adam Schefter and Adrian Wojnarowski and others are often among the first in their respective sports to get information up on Twitter for the masses.

College football has people like Bruce Feldman who normally break major stories.

Except USC to the Big 10.

That story was first broken by a completely nobody from Minnesota as far back as April.

Greg Flugaur, who has absolutely no reporting background whatsoever, received a call on March 31st telling him that the Big 10 was considering expansion with USC in particular. He even tweeted, "Everything Trojan is back on the table."

Then he posted a video on April 4th, months before the news became official, detailing that the USC called the Big 10 about leaving the Pac-12 Conference:

How did he do it?!

Greg apparently knows someone he calls "Big Ten Man," an influential Minnesota donor who's extremely plugged in to confidential information.

His anonymous friend will send him new information and apparently ask him to distribute it widely, which he does.

Normally these kinds of random, unconfirmed reports months in advance turn out to be wildly off-base, but with Greg, the information was obviously entirely accurate.

(Photo by Jayne Kamin-Oncea/Getty Images)

It's hard to believe that people within the Big 10 wanted the information to get out.

And if they did, why go to a random Minnesota nobody who most people wouldn't believe? Why not just leak directly to the reporters with credibility?

It's a bizarre story with no easy explanation. Sometimes random people have well placed connections that get them access to accurate, inside information the public isn't privy to yet. It's just usually not as important as one of college football's premier programs leaving their long time conference home.

Seemingly the moral of this story is that when you come across unconfirmed news from a seeming nobody, maybe think about it for a second before dismissing it as obviously fake.