Can any SEC coach slow down Kirby Smart now that Nick Saban is gone?
The Southeastern Conference started playing football in 1933. You will not be surprised to learn that Alabama won the first conference championship. The Crimson Tide has added 29 league titles since.
The SEC conducted its first Football Media Days in 1985 in Birmingham. The Birmingham News’ lead story on the first day of the inaugural event appeared below the fold on the sports section front page. The News reported that “more than 200 members of the sports media converged” on the Holiday Inn-Medical Center.
At the time, it was considered a large turnout.
The 39th edition of the league’s entertaining contribution to talkin’ season kicks off Monday, and it’ll be as fresh and unfamiliar as that initial gathering of coaches and players from 10 SEC schools. RIP, Pat Dye and Ray Perkins. Speak up, Brent Venables and Steve Sarkisian.
Everything old will be new again. Everyone will converge on a new city in Dallas, where the conference will have to share restaurant reservations and space on the front pages with the Major League Baseball All-Star Game.
There will be two new schools on the marquee in Oklahoma and Texas and five head coaches at the mike for the first time at this made-for-TV pep rally: OU’s Venables, UT’s Sarkisian, Alabama’s Kalyn DeBoer, Mississippi State’s Jeff Lebby and Texas A&M’s Mike Elko.
