1st SEC Media Days with 16 teams gets underway in Dallas

dallas — The SEC took Commissioner Greg Sankey’s self-styled “It Just Means More” motto to a different level three years ago when it agreed to accept tradition-rich Oklahoma and Texas to the league to create an “it just means more teams” scenario.

The 16-team behemoth sits on the cutting edge of college athletics, which means the rest of the industry will be all ears as Sankey opens SEC media days Monday at the Omni Dallas with his annual state-of-the-league address.

Not lost in the narrative is media days taking place deep in the heart of Texas ahead of the Longhorns’ first season in the conference. Sankey and the conference office began the traveling SEC media days trend before Oklahoma and Texas were tapped to join, but the league didn’t waste the chance to capitalize on staking Dallas as prime SEC territory in the new order.

No doubt Texas strode into the SEC on July 1 with a degree of swagger as the highest revenue-producing program in the country, but with an expansive list of heavyweights and Sankey at the helm, the Longhorns should not be able to throw their weight around as they did in alienating fellow Southwest Conference and Big 12 members for the last several decades.

As an example, the Longhorn Network, created in August 2011 to the exclusive benefit of the school and not the Big 12, ceased operations on June 30, the day before Texas and Oklahoma joined the SEC.

With the SEC still adapting to ever-changing name, image and likeness concerns and the issues of administering a 16-team league in the first year of the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff, what thoughts will Sankey provide on the newest fronts facing athletics?

SEC schools are now having to prepare for the likelihood of revenue sharing, with schools making direct payments to athletes at the same time their donor bases are still adjusting to NIL demands.

Can big-time college football still see through the entanglements of finances and the politics of conference alignment to find the joy in the game?

The expanded SEC will start this new era with a seeming jump on the competition, after putting both Alabama and Texas (the Big 12 champion in the Longhorns’ final season in the conference) in the four-team playoff last year, while two-time defending CFP champion Georgia, which was ranked No. 1 most of the season, just missed the affair.

Some analysts believe the SEC will be in position to put five teams into the 12-team draw this winter.

The retirement of Nick Saban last winter also stands as a milepost heading into this media event.

Saban’s Crimson Tide lost a home game to Texas 34-24 last September, then won 11 games in a row and upset his protege Kirby Smith’s Georgia Bulldogs to make the playoffs before he rode off into the sunset. Saban re-emerged in February under contract to ESPN to provide analysis for “College Game Day.”

ESPN is now the one-stop shop for SEC televised fare under the ABC/Disney umbrella. The SEC on CBS, a 28-year marvel, ended with the SEC Championship game last December.

Saban’s replacement, two-year Washington Coach Kalen DeBoer, had the Huskies in last year’s CFP Championship game, where they lost 34-13 to Michigan to cap a 14-1 season. The rise for DeBoer, 49, through college football is nothing short of remarkable. He got his first head coaching gig at Fresno State a mere four years ago, just 11 years after wrapping up a run at his alma mater Sioux Falls. His head coaching record is 104-12 — a percentage that is similar to that which Saban maintained for 22 years at LSU and Alabama, where he won seven national championships and 11 SEC titles. Whether he can keep that up in the SEC is a matter for speculation.

DeBoer is one of three first-year coaches at media days, joining Mississippi State’s Jeff Lebby and Texas A&M’s Mike Elko.

Saban’s departure leaves Kentucky Coach Mark Stoops as the dean of SEC coaches, now entering his 12th year with the Wildcats. Stoops was reportedly on the brink of taking the head coaching job with the Aggies created after the firing of Jimbo Fisher late in his sixth season with about $75 million still remaining on his guaranteed contract. After producing a 9-1 record and No. 5 finish in the covid-19 year of 2020, the Aggies were 19-15 under Fisher from 2021-23.

The next-longest tenure belongs to Smart, who has a 94-16 record (.855) through eight seasons in Athens, Ga.

The average tenure of the 16 SEC head coaches is 4.125, reflective of the short leashes afforded by athletic departments, combined with the grinding pressures of the job.

Mississippi State is on its third head coach in 18 months after the unexpected death of Mike Leach in December 2022. His replacement Zach Arnett guided the Bulldogs to a 4-6 record last season before being fired. He’s now an analyst for Lane Kiffin at Ole Miss.

Kiffin, Arkansas Coach Sam Pittman and Missouri Coach Eli Drinkwitz are all entering their fifth seasons. Kiffin has had the most success among the three with a 34-15 mark at Ole Miss, including a pair of double-digit win campaigns: 10-3 in 2021 and 11-2 last year.

Drinkwitz, the Alma High School and Arkansas Tech graduate, is 28-21 with the Tigers. He led Missouri to an 11-2 record last season and received a raise that will increase his pay to $9 million this season and $9.5 million by the final year of his new deal in 2028.

Pittman has a 23-25 record that includes a fall to 4-8 last season. He is 2-2 in head-to-head games against Ole Miss, including a pair of narrow losses in Oxford, Miss., and 1-3 against Drinkwitz, including a 48-14 rout at the hands of the Tigers in last year’s finale at Reynolds Razorback Stadium.

Pittman will lead off the proceedings on Thursday, the last day of the event. The Razorbacks and Texas A&M will be in the media rooms in the morning, while Auburn and Kentucky will wrap up media days.

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