Word could have come any time last week.

A news release a few days before Saturday night’s Mississippi-Wake Forest football game stating that Wake Forest would not be traveling to The Grove next year, as scheduled, wouldn’t have been well received.

But it would have, at least, gotten a program apparently rich enough to pay $1 million to not play a game out in front with the messaging.

Yet, nothing.

Word could have even come Saturday morning.

If you want to get breaking news out there with a soft landing, there’s an avenue. Even if you miss the Friday afternoon news dump window, you can float it to ESPN’s Pete Thamel and he’ll talk about it on GameDay.

It still won’t be well received but again, you’re in control of the message and within a few hours, most of the college football doesn’t care because there are games being played.

Yet, nothing.

By the time Wake Forest kicked off to Ole Miss — which won the coin toss and had a captain declare at midfield of Wake’s own stadium, “We want the ball” — it was too late.

Lane Train wasn’t going to miss this layup.

It wasn’t until Ole Miss was finished with its weird, herky-jerky, could’ve-been-worse 40-6 win over Wake Forest that coach Lane Kiffin took it upon himself to break the news.

“John Currie called and said they’re buying out the game,” Kiffin said during his opening statement in Saturday’s post-game press conference. “I thought that was a good message for our players. Someone was willing to pay money not to play us.”

Agreed.

And now it’s time to sort out the other side of it.

Without any official word from Wake Forest, we’re left to what we know. Which isn’t much, while leaving us to fill in the blanks with speculation.

First, let’s sum up what we know:

- Coach Dave Clawson spoke glowingly of Ole Miss’ talent level and acquisition last week.

- And he talked about how far away — while acknowledging there’s positive movement — Wake Forest is from three seasons ago, when it played for an ACC championship and was, at one point, seen in the top 10 of the College Football Playoff rankings.

- Wake Forest was overmatched in the first quarter, played Ole Miss relatively close in the middle portion of the game, and a couple of late scores made the result look worse than it was going to be.

- ACC commissioner Jim Phillips has instructed teams to play more non-conference games against Power 4 teams, which is why Appalachian State doesn't have N.C. State on its schedule next year.

- Wake’s non-conference schedule next year was the trip to Ole Miss and home games against an FCS team, a team that’ll be in its first year as a full-time FBS member (Kennesaw State), and one that’s going to be a year away from being a full-time FBS member (Delaware).

Scintillating without a trip to the Sip, isn’t it?

We can speculate that Clawson and Currie don’t want to deal with the headache that comes with playing a well-funded SEC juggernaut — though the headache of what this story has become should dwarf that.

We can speculate that Wake Forest has something else lined up, something against a like-minded program like Northwestern — though that’s not likely to be a moneymaker, traveling to a temporary stadium that seats about 15,000.

We can speculate until Wake’s secondary gets through a game without a blown coverage.

The silence is now the issue. We know every detail worth knowing; that Wake Forest paid $1 million to remove itself from Ole Miss’ schedule, leaving the SEC program in the lurch for a non-conference game in less than a year, and removing the only non-conference game that moves the interest needle from its own schedule.

An explanation of why is really all that’s required. Maybe it’ll come in the form of a press release or an interview or a From the Quad newsletter. But 60 hours later:

Yet, nothing.