SEC Media Days are mercifully over, though one could question whether they ever really got going.
Sure, there was Arch Mania, that flubbed Texas fight song introduction for Steve Sarkisian and my favorite interview yet between Paul Finebaum and Lane Kiffin. But for an event known for being a circus, from the infamous question to Tim Tebow that shall not be named to the madhouse around Johnny Manizel, this year’s four-day event felt like it was missing something.
I texted five long-time SEC Media Days veterans in attendance this week in Atlanta and their answers were all pretty similar: The event just didn’t have much juice.
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“No buzz, no interest, a snoozefest — a complete waste of four days,” is how one long-time attendee put it.
Others pointed out the lack of star power outside of Arch Manning who drew a huge crowd but one that still paled in comparison to what Manizel experienced in 2013. With all the player movement from program to program within college athletics, there just aren’t as many household names that move the needle for fans and media alike.
“The most interesting personality is…the Vanderbilt QB,” is how another grizzled veteran summed up the problem.
The SEC holds the biggest and most talked-about media days event each year, with regular media attendance upwards of 1,200 annually. And the SEC badly missed the legendary Bob Holt, a terrific journalist and good person who was an annual star at media days for his litany of questions he’d pepper at coaches. But what plagued this year’s edition isn’t unique to the SEC.
Go to any other big conference media days like the ACC or Big Ten’s next week and you might have a similar experience, albeit with considerably less media in attendance. It has become a made-for-TV event which is great for those media partners but less so for the lowly reporters in attendance just trying to uncover some interesting anecdotes and quotes. Coaches and players alike are intent on trying to say absolutely nothing of note or substance.
When you spend hours watching or participating in them, your eyes start to glaze over and it all starts to mesh together after you hear repetitive answer after repetitive answer about why a coach feels good about this year’s team. They aren’t going to reveal anything actually interesting because there’s no incentive to. They are just trying to survive and advance out of media days without creating a stir, and they’ve largely mastered that strategy. The days of Robbie Caldwell talking turkeys feel like a lifetime ago.
The more time that passes, the farther away we drift from the original idea of media days altogether. The intent, to give newspaper writers plenty of copy to fill their college football preview sections, is very outdated. With everything either being televised or posted almost immediately, there’s no ability to hold anything that’s not an exclusive interview. It’s a fire sale world, everything must go immediately. It typically leads to a lot of empty calories, but recently even those have been hard to come by. The written content coming out of the general media days experience rarely, if ever, moves the needle now.
They serve a purpose for the conferences, no doubt, a free multi-day advertisement for the upcoming season. It’s why they likely aren’t going away any time soon even if cranky sports writers love to complain about them. With that in mind, we’re here to offer some solutions to improve what feels like a stale format.
1. Fewer media, fewer participants and fewer days
This idea is surely dead on arrival because it goes against the ethos of more content is always better. But we’ve seen big events like the Super Bowl and College Football Playoff national championship squeeze it all into one big media day involving hundreds of people. In the supersized conference era one day probably isn’t enough, but we surely don’t need four days, either. Make it two days of eight teams a piece and have them go at the same time.
Similarly, let’s cut down on the total number of people there. There are far too many “media members” who are more interested in drinking free Dr Pepper and trying to get on TV than actually working at these events. Reduce the total number of participants and you get a better working environment that is more conducive to eliciting interesting answers and real news. We see that year-after-year at the newsworthy spring meetings that the SEC, ACC and others hold.
Here’s another bold idea: Bringing three players each feels stale. Too many schools treat media days as a reward to veteran players rather than bringing the most interesting players. There are differing arguments on whether bringing more or less than the required three might have a better shot at accomplishing that, but something needs to be done to shake things up. Control freak coaches would never let it happen but what if we let media vote on which players each school needs to bring?
2. Follow the Pac-12’s lead
It may have been only a one-off but the Pac-12 was on to something when it held a scaled down media event with an open bar last year. A more relaxed environment where everything isn’t televised and everyone can grab a free Old Fashioned has a better shot at letting reporters and coaches/players alike to actually get to know each other. It has gotten harder and harder to really know major coaches and athletes in this era, and anything that can be done to combat that challenge should be considered.
Not every conference could pull this off given the scale, but even adding a happy hour where everything is on background would be a step in the right direction.
3. Move away from podiums
Putting coaches and players behind podiums is always going to lead to more buttoned-up and rehearsed answers. You want the participant to feel comfortable and relaxed in a conversation, and putting them behind a big podium and microphone eliminates any chance of that. It’s what the TV networks want and from a convenience standpoint it certainly is easier for the conferences to do it that way.
But if we embrace my idea of doing it all in two days instead of four, we can have multiple head coaches going at the same time and just split them up across a football field. Sure, some coaches and players will still generate much bigger crowds than the others, but it at least forces reporters to have to choose. The Big Ten has done this at Lucas Oil Stadium to success, albeit still with mini-podiums. Last year my colleague Brandon Marcello and I were able to have a real, authentic conversation with UCLA coach DeShaun Foster after an awkward podium experience had the internet railing on him. The SEC’s “Digital Drive,” formerly known as Radio Row, does a good job of accomplishing that, and there has to be a way to replicate those abilities to have conversations elsewhere.
None of these solutions fix everything that ails the conference media days experience, but it’s a start. With all the tremendous change that has turned college sports upside down over the last five years, it’d be nice to see a little find its way to a format that could use a revamp.
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