Sunday, July 13, 2014

Malzahn, Muschamp to Field Tough Questions

It's time to allow yourself to start getting excited about college football.

Just 45 days stand between us and August 28, when Ole Miss kicks off the season against Boise State, and the excitement really gets kick-started today with the beginning of SEC Media Days. Thousands of sports writers, television reporters and bloggers will converge on the Wynfrey Hotel in Hoover, Alabama, to hang onto, scribble and Tweet the every word of the SEC's 14 head football coaches, a select few star players from each team and of course the keynote address of the one of the most powerful men in all of sports - SEC Commissioner Mike Slive.

Press conferences don't get any larger than this:
Each of those chairs will be filled with a reporter, pecking away at a laptop, waiting for a juicy quote and hoping for a zinger from guys like Steve Spurrier and Nick Saban.

After the head coach talks, the three players he brought with him to Birmingham field questions at tables set out in the opposite three corners of the large room. It looks something like this:
And that's how the term "Media Circus" came to be.

With the onset of the SEC Network (launching August 14) this year's SEC Media Days will be the biggest yet, and it's been broken into four days. Most of the event will be viewable at home on ESPNU or at the office on Watch ESPN. LINK

Hugh Freeze doesn't take the stage until Thursday, when most of the reporters will be bleary eyed and sick of typing coach-speak, but you and I will still hang on his every word. We're ready for football, and after months of pigskin drought, a speech from Freeze is better than the Groundhog not seeing his shadow. Fall is coming!

Today's schedule:

Mike Slive - 11 a.m.
Auburn coach Gus Malzahn - 11:30ish (depending on how long Slive talks)

Florida coach Will Muschamp - 2:40 p.m.
Vanderbilt coach Derek Mason - 4 p.m.ish (immediately after Muschamp)

And that'll be in for day one.

Tuesday:
(Session 1: 9 a.m.-noon)
South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier
Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen

(Session 2: 1-4 p.m.)
Texas A&M coach Kevin Sumlin
Tennessee coach Butch Jones

Wednesday:
(Session 1: 9 a.m.-noon)
SEC Officials Steve Shaw and Justin Connolly
Missouri coach Gary Pinkel

(Session 2: 1-4 p.m.)
LSU coach Les Miles
Arkansas coach Bret Bielema

Thursday:
(Session 1: 9 a.m.-noon)
Georgia coach Mark Richt
Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze

(Session 2: noon-3 p.m.)
Alabama coach Nick Saban
Kentucky coach Mark Stoops

But enough with boring schedule stuff, let's take a stab at what today's speakers might say. 

Mike Slive will spend several minutes regaling the room with tales of the enormity of the checks being distributed to SEC member schools ($20.9 million) for 2013-14 before he'll launch into talk about the new SEC Network. Set to launch on August 14, the network now boasts about 50 million homes thanks to the most recent addition of Cox Communications, but a couple big fish distributors remain - namely DIRECTV and Comcast. Slive's words will no doubt be carefully crafted to enhance the SEC's position in those ongoing negotiations. When he leaves the stage we'll all think to ourselves that this country would have been far better off if Slive was the president, and we'll all be right.


After Slive comes 2nd year Auburn coach Gus Malzahn. At last year's media days Auburn was selected by the media to finish 5th in the West - behind Ole Miss and just slightly ahead of Mississippi State and Arkansas. Malzahn returns to SEC Media Days one year later having just missed a BCS Championship in his very first remarkable year at the helm. Last year Malzahn faced a room full of doubters. This year he'll face that same crowd as the defending SEC Champion. It'll be interesting to watch how Malzahn handles the room. He would be entitled to stand up there and snicker if he felt so lead. Unfortunately, some of that bravado will be zapped by quarterback Nick Marshall's recent legal troubles - he was cited in Georgia on Friday for possession of a small amount of marijuana. This isn't the first time Marshall has ever been in trouble. He was kicked off the Georgia football team in February 2012 for disciplinary reasons before finding redemption on the Auburn Plains. The talented quarterback was set to appear at Media Days, but was pulled Sunday night. Will Marshall be suspended for a game or more? That'll be one of the first topics Malzahn addresses. Count on it.
Then Florida coach Will Muschamp takes the stage. I've never heard a coach say so many words without breathing as Muschamp did at the 2013 media days. He gets nervous in front of a big crowd. Expect even more anxiety today. Muschamp is coaching for a his job after a catastrophic 4-8 season and a super embarrassing loss to Georgia Southern last season. Muschamp will field some pointed questions about his future and what's at stake for him in 2014. This is it for Muschamp. He has to either win or go back to being a defensive coordinator.

The mood will lighten up for new Vanderbilt coach Derek Fisher. New coaches always get a pass, and the expectations for Vanderbilt won't be very high after losing most of their star playmakers and the most successful head coach in Commodore history - James Franklin. The media will throw Fisher some softballs and try to size him up in comparison to Franklin. Frankly, Fisher is still a mystery to me. We'll know him a little better after today, but we won't really know him until September 6, when the Rebels face Vanderbilt.

Stay tuned to OMRebelNation.com throughout the week as we discuss the latest goings on at SEC Media Days.

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