SEC Media Days 2014: Coverage from college football’s biggest convention

When Steve Spurrier steps to a podium to partake in what he calls “talkin’ season,” the anticipation is palpable. It’s like a movie, when silence turns to commotion at the drop of a pin.

This week, the excitement wasn’t limited to Hoover, Alabama, where Spurrier gave his annual address to the college football world. For those of us elsewhere, it spread through Twitter on an otherwise dull Tuesday morning. With most coaches, we would have to hope reporters could press and press and press to get something interesting. But with Spurrier, it’s a whirlwind 25 minutes of fun. He stepped to the podium ... and he was off.

So Les has been a soccer fan for all of one month and has already figured out that FIFA is more akin to a conglomerate than, you know, a soccer organization. He’s smart.

He also likes smash mouth futbol. Of course.

Nick Saban spoke on Thursday at SEC Media Days, and when Nick Saban talks, everyone listens, whether the topic was crying babies, Little Debbies, Texas or actual football. Take a look at his 10 best quotes from the media session.

Ole Miss is slated to open 2014 at two NFL stadiums, including the Chick-fil-A Kickoff on Thursday, Aug. 30 vs. Boise State on ESPN, the first time the Rebels will have ever played in the Georgia Dome.

That kind of exposure is largely foreign to the Rebels. They’re the only SEC West team to never play in the championship game, and one of only three teams in the league (Vandy and Kentucky being the others) to have never played a game in Atlanta.

“Yes. Yes,” Conley said at SEC Media Days.

Conley’s 26-minute “Star Wars” fan-film “Retribution” was a substantial summer project, starting with preproduction last November and two months of script work and stunt coordination with Conley’s Infinite Productions in Athens. The story in “Retribution” blends both “Star Wars” canon and SEC football, featuring head coach Mark Richt and notable Athens landmarks, namely Sanford Stadium. The film was shot over a series of weekends this February.

Former Georgia Bulldog and current Auburn quarterback Nick Marshall’s absence from SEC Media Days hinges on his citation for marijuana possession. Marshall’s status for Auburn’s kickoff against Arkansas is TBD, but there’d be little clarity if Marshall was still a Bulldog, from where he was once dismissed for his alleged involvement in a robbery.

UGA has enacted and utilized one of the strictest drug policies in the SEC during Mark Richt’s time in Athens. In 2012 Richt defended his policies after another offseason of player dismissals, including multiple starters:

Nobody shows up for a meaningless event quite like Alabama fans in the lobby at SEC Media Days.

Except for Auburn fans after their team beat Alabama in one of the greatest games in sport history, of course.

The SEC announced its preseason media all-conference teams and predicted order of finish today. Alabama was voted the heavy favorite to win the league, followed by Auburn, South Carolina and Georgia. The media also voted for the order of finish in each division:

SEC East

Since their arrival to the SEC during the league’s 1992 expansion, Arkansas has struggled to complement a history of great college football with a true end-of-season rival. The SEC manufactured LSU as the Hogs’ season ender, going so far as to promote the game with a Thanksgiving Friday time slot and a weird trophy.

It’s hard to call LSU “the” rival for Arkansas, considering that the Tigers have bigger rivals and the Razorbacks have so many of them, historically.

LSU recently announced an expanded stadium capacity of 102,321 entering the 2014 season. Combined with Death Valley’s historic appeal and universal acclaim for some of the most unhinged atmospheres in all of sport, there’s no question Les Miles loves that home-field advantage.

“We like playing at home. There isn’t any question. We enjoy walking down the hill to that stadium. We enjoy the style of people that come in there who are intimately attached to our football team. The opponent has a very difficult time getting the ball snapped,” Miles said Wednesday.

Remember how excited the college football community was at the announcement of a simple, exciting four-team playoff?

Never fear! College Football Playoff executive director Bill Hancock was on hand at SEC Media Days to outline the multiple layers of unnecessary excess confusion created by individual bowl mandates for the games just below the Nos. 1-4 Playoff seeds.

A bar called On Tap, located in the parking lot of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Hoover, Ala., serves as the de facto after-hours hangout at SEC Media Days. The bar itself is a perfectly fine place to drink a draft beer, but its popularity lies primarily in the fact that the beer specials are reasonable.

But hey, own it, On Tap.

The NCAA’s new targeting rules, established for 2013, were a disaster. Defenders were automatically ejected and penalized 15 yards for hitting offensive players about the head and shoulders -- but the ejection could be overturned upon review, while the penalty stood, even if the player was found to have not actually targeted.

It was dumb, everyone hated it, and it’s changing now.

We’ll keep adding to this list of head coach rundowns as we venture through the four-day event, with a new batch every day. This will include writeups by those we have on the scene (SBNation.com’s Steven Godfrey, along with SEC site Team Speed Kills and Texas A&M site Good Bull Hunting) and those covering their teams from afar.

The annual Biggest Deal at the event, whether he actually says anything of interest or not. Just kidding. Everything he says is of interest, as evidenced by four facts:

Judged objectively, the scheduling format the SEC will keep using is pretty terrible. Teams are tied to an annual game with one cross-divisional opponent and see the rest sporadically over a six-year rotation. It’s a mess, but it protects two old-school SEC rivalries: Auburn vs. Georgia and Tennessee vs. Alabama.

“The Third Saturday in October” is a wonderfully hateful affair, but not much in the way of quality football. The Vols-Tide rivalry has always been streaky, but lately it’s been ridiculous. Alabama has won seven games in a row by an average score of 36-11. Only once in that span were the Crimson Tide unranked, or even ranked outside the top seven when this game was played. Meanwhile, Tennessee has only been ranked once in that span (in 2007), and the Volunteers have been through three head coaches.

Even without a division or conference title, Texas A&M head coach Kevin Sumlin has been able to treat the last two SEC Media Days as a victory lap, having first dispelled the notion that the Aggies wouldn’t be able to compete in the SEC and more recently that A&M would struggle to recruit its own state without the benefit of playing teams like Texas.

Not only has Texas A&M risen to the top of the SEC in recruiting prowess in its first two years in the league, it has also far surpassed its Big 12 neighbors in Texas.

Perhaps the saddest part of conference realignment is the end of historic rivalries. In the SEC alone, Texas A&M vs. Texas and Kansas vs. Mizzou fell prey to conference realignment. But that’s OK! Enjoy the storied tradition of Texas A&M vs. South Carolina!

The SEC’s new scheduling arrangement includes one cross-division rival for each team. While the eight-game system can create imbalance among teams and cause absurdly long breaks between when conference foes see each other, the rivalries worked out pretty well.

The SEC’s recent embrace of up-tempo offenses is something Vanderbilt coach and former Stanford defensive coordinator Derek Mason has some experience trying to stop.

The problem for the Commodores’ first-year head coach is depth, as former head coach James Franklin raided the 2014 signing class on his way to Penn State. That will create an even steeper curve for Mason’s implementation of the Stanford defense to the SEC, as he plans on using as many freshman bodies as possible.

The SEC Network has unveiled a new commercial during SEC Media Days about the head football coaches of -- you guessed it! -- the SEC. Take a look, but also a listen:

There’s a man going around taking names

Lawson, who made a key stop in this year’s Iron Bowl, was initially considered a candidate to play in this year’s opener, given that Tigers defensive coordinator Ellis Johnson called his recovery so far “phenomenal.” Lawson’s father even said in June that missing time this year was “not in the thought process.”

According to the article, the exact details of the injury are unclear, but the family confirmed that Lawson had not torn his ACL.

Other than that, Malzahn said he’s not yet prepared to announce Marshall’s punishment. He was asked whether a possible suspension for the Tigers’ season opener is on the table, but said he’s “not at that point” yet.

Auburn’s drug policy dictates no loss of playing time on a first offense, but suspension for half a season on second offense and dismissal from the team on third offense.

This gent makes the rounds at SEC Media Days every year, as do billions (or so) of other Alabama fans. And this year, he’s in the Wynfrey already, despite the Tide’s session not scheduled until Thursday afternoon.

In 2012, our Steven Godfrey disguised himself and embedded in the Bama fan horde. He found it pleasant.

Florida released its media guide cover Monday at SEC Media Days, and it’s a hot one! Literally.

That makes sense. Fire’s always in. It’s often used for sports metaphors.

SEC Media Days is a four-day extravaganza in which more than 1,000 media members swarm on Hoover, Ala., to talk with SEC coaches, players and other associated SEC personnel. This is the first time the event will span four days.

Each major conference has an event like it, but the SEC’s managed to create an actual event out of its. It’s usually a high-octane event (as far as media events go), with weird questions, weird answers and a whole lot of optimism. There will be prepared statements, interviews and autographs for the fans that choose to show up. Here’s our coverage from last year’s event, to give you a better idea of what’s in store.

The SEC had a seven-year run of national championships, which ended last season, when Auburn lost to Florida State. Maybe you’ve heard about this.

The effects on the conference’s official annual media guide are apparent. Above is the 2014 edition, and below are the three previous, each of which gives very prominent space to the title streak.