SEC Media Days were a RIOT!!!

This past Wednesday began the largest media sports gathering in America outside of the Super Bowl media day. The Annual SEC Media Days took place in Hoover,Alabama. The SEC Media Days are broadcast yearly in its' entirety by ESPN-U and ESPNEWS and nearly 2,000 media credentials are handed out to various media outlets around the southeast and all over America. The New York Times, Foxnews, CNNSI, Sporting News, FSR, Los Angeles Times, NBCSports, and nearly every single sports and talk radio station in the Southeast had at least one person covering the event. It has become "THE UNOFFICIAL OFFICIAL START OF THE COLLEGE FOOTBALL SEASON".

With the NEW MEDIA such as blogs and fan websites becoming more-and-more important the SEC issued media passes to several fan sites and bloggers. Those people(me included) tend to be FANS and have alot more biased questions and ideas than the typical media. Bloggers and fan sites will ask oppossing coaches about players on the team they specifically cover to get a great article or post to write. They are specifically PROMOTING their favorite program.

This year's media days had the funniest controversy you could ever imagine. Who didn't vote for Tim Tebow as First Team ALL-SEC Quarterback??? A Florida fan site began questioning EVERY SINGLE SEC COACH AND PLAYER as to who was responsible for such an injustice. Each coach was asked if he voted against Tebow and as a follow up they were asked to comment on how good Tebow is as a quarterback. Several coaches spent more time talking about and answering questions about Tim Tebow than their own program. Dan Mullins for example spent more than 75% of his time during the question session with the media talking about his time mentoring Tebow, and hardly nothing about his own team.

By Day Three coaches who had just entered Hoover were opening their press conferences by telling the media that they had voted for Tebow so they wouldn't be asked a question about it. They would then go into a few minute statement on how good Tebow is as a quarterback, only to be asked how good Tebow is in a question usually from a Florida fansite.

The Media Days then took a turn for the surreal when USC Head Football Coach Steve Spurrier opened his press conference by saying that one of his staffers filled out his SEC team and put Jevan Snead of Ole Miss on the First Team. Spurrier was remorseful about it to the point that you would have thought he had just committed a criminal act. This in turn caused the media to go into a frenzy. In what was suppossed to be Spurrier's state of the program address and Q & A with the media became a 15 minute question and answer session about why he didn't fill out the stupid poll that doesn't mean anything anyway.

Spurrier was clearly uncomfortable when a reporter asked him what Florida people would think with his mistake. The odd thing about the whole situation is that the old Spurrier would have said "I think Snead is better". Spurrier looked about as comfortable in his press conference as Tommy Bowden did at his. He wasn't the man I witnessed say what was on his mind during the 1990s and 1980s at Duke and Florida. The OLD Spurrier would have told the media that it was his opinion and not try to place the blame on a staffer. He would do that whether the staffer did it or not.

The other amazing question that came about was by a blogger that asked Tim Tebow if he was a virgin. Amazingly instead of Tebow saying it's none of your business he answered the question with no problem.

The SEC Media Days are fun because it is becoming as outlandish as the Super Bowl media days. The ACC will have their media days this weekend and three quarters of the teams will not have one school fansite at the event. The outlandishness of the SEC Media Days makes the event more fun for fans and creates controversy. How many Florida fans would have thought about the Gamecock game this November if reporters had not been so upset that Tebow was not picked by every single coach. That game now means MORE.

The SEC does it right. The outlandishness of the event and questions gets headlines on ESPN, CNNSI, and even Foxnews television which ran a report on the huge storyline. How many times does Foxnews have a story on sports much less a sports media gathering. The SEC got what every other conference in America wishes they could have and that's why THEY ARE BY FAR THE BEST CONFERENCE IN ALL OF COLLEGE FOOTBALL!!!