SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE SPORTS MEDIA CONFERENCE

March 11, 2021

Greg Sankey

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Hello, everybody and welcome to today's press conference with SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey.

GREG SANKEY: Good afternoon or good evening, depending on your location. I hope everyone is well. We're in the midst of day two of the SEC basketball tournament, obviously a day of celebration for the fact that we're playing basketball. I just left the court where Missouri and Georgia are warming up for the first game this evening's session. Amidst that celebration is a little bit of memory from what happened last year on this Thursday when we didn't tip off. In fact, we stopped everything rapidly that day.

We have in the 12 months since walked a journey of disruption, of a lot of questions. In fact, many of you will recall around this same time last year a press conference where likely the most frequently raised -- the most frequently uttered phrase by me was "I don't know," and that was simply an honest assessment of our situation.

The next day we stopped practice, stopped all of our on-campus activities around college athletics, and we did so never imagining we would not come back until June 8th with voluntary opportunities and then our traditional summer access well into the month of July.

Yet we sit here competing and having done so in a healthy way. I noted on an interview yesterday that in the three weeks preceding this event, our men's basketball tournament, from the swimming and diving championships for both men and women in Columbia, Missouri, and in Athens, Georgia, our indoor track and field championships again for men and women, those being in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and in Greenville, South Carolina, with our women's basketball championship, we've conducted just under 5,000 PCR-based lab-conducted third-party administered COVID tests, and from that abundance of testing had one student-athlete test positive.

That's a tribute to the work done by our young people to remain healthy and by the leadership -- evidence of leadership on our campuses. We're here, never knowing that we might have disruption like we experienced in the regular season, yet able to still move forward.

With that, we'll take some questions.

Q. Can you just talk about what we've learned in the last year and what maybe will change moving forward because of COVID?

GREG SANKEY: I could probably might go a dozen different directions. Part of my reflection is we didn't know how to test for COVID. We didn't know how to access supplies and manage through a process in a timely manner that would make certain we have healthy people involved in our competitions.

So you fast forward, we've learned how to do so. We're not able to predict what may happen in the weeks or months ahead, so we're fully prepared to continue forward with what we've learned.

I think second, we've learned to deal with disruption in a way that we've not experienced certainly in the volume we've seen but just the need to adapt rapidly.

Now, does that translate into a normal season, whether it's football, soccer, basketball, whatever? I don't know that it does, but it does demonstrate at a baseline that we can be more flexible than we have been.

I think what's interesting is I would expect that will lead itself into conversations about the future.

I think thirdly, we've had to look carefully at revenue and expenses, and that's done independently on our campuses. Everyone has adjusted. We've worked to be careful, working to maximize revenue distribution as we go through our fiscal year, and so that focus is something that has really always been there, but college athletics has expanded so much in the last two decades that this was an important check on how we operate.

I think fourthly, we've learned to continue to conduct our business, to support young people, to care for young people, to educate them. We've continued to meet, make decisions, have press conference and socially distance in a much more economical fashion, so that's a learning that will continue forward.

You ask that question at a time when we have any number of issues pressing upon us other than COVID which are going to require adaptation, so I would conclude the answer with the ability to adapt through a new, unimagined dynamic circumstance is going to have to guys some of our decision making given the issues that are presenting themselves at the state and federal governmental level around college sports. We're going to have to rely on that experience moving forward.

Q. Back in September when you guys approved the waivers for intraconference transfers, you made it pretty clear that that was because of the pandemic and not necessarily any individual waiver cases. Obviously the pandemic is still going on, so do you, A, anticipate intraconference transfers being immediately eligible this off-season? And B, do you have the sense that there's any permanent move to alter that rule or change it in a way that hasn't been in the past?

GREG SANKEY: An element of our decision making on the intraconference transfer waiver issue in the fall was the work happening at the national level and the expectation that in January the NCAA would change its transfer rules to essentially create commonality among sports, and obviously that impacted football and basketball in particular.

The combination of issues meant we anticipated a review of the intraconference transfer rule happening this spring. My expectation back in October -- excuse me, September, October, was we'd start that activity in late January right after what is the traditional NCAA convention traditional decision-making time.

You'll recall I think right around the CFP championship date that that decision making was put on hold. There was a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice that did so.

So just kind of level setting and stopping the bureaucratic speak, the expectation is this spring at some point the NCAA will make a decision on its rules.

We are going to be entertaining rule changes that usually lead into our Destin meeting. We'll see if that meeting takes place. I don't in the off-season, to be specific to your question, anticipate entertaining waivers. In fact, we've communicated the intraconference rule still stands. Our membership has voted on that rule. It's been in place for decades. It was waived the one time because of unique circumstances, and our member institutions if they want to change the rule need to submit their revision for the future and how we manage transfer issues within the conference, and that will be subject to our normal legislative process through the conference.

If the rules change, there won't be a need for waivers. If the membership says no, we want to keep the rule as is, I expect we'll narrow and reduce any consideration of waivers to those that are specifically legislated.

That's a lot, so I hope that I somehow answered the question. I don't want to be overly specific, but I don't anticipate off-season waivers. Our membership needs to deal with what it wants in the rule, and we're going to need to do that I think when we understand what's going to happen at the national level.

Q. Something more on a personal level down in Birmingham where your headquarters is, it seems like yesterday you met with you outside the commissioner's office and there's a lot of things that have happened in between. What are some of the things you and your staff have been during the pandemic? I know you mentioned running, things like that, just on a personal level that SEC fans wanted to know about the commissioner during this time.

GREG SANKEY: Well, from a personal level, I haven't had much choice but to manage through every day. We've spaced out our sessions here to allow for cleaning in the arena and was just on a little bit of a walk and a conversation with one of our staff where one of the things I described is that it's hard to describe, the answer to your question, because in many ways it's been relentless. It's been a daily experience of not knowing what will happen.

I think that day I met in the back hallway I was trying to out-wait you, that was probably mid July when our athletics directors met because we'd been working through the ultimate uncertain environment, and so decisions have had to be made, reactions have had to take place on a daily basis.

I'll just take a step back from myself. If you go back to this Thursday last year, on Monday our office was open because we'd had so much going on. We just said, if you want to come in, come in. We probably had half of our staff, and about 3:00 that afternoon, it was a Monday, I think March 16th, I pulled everyone together and also sent an email that said we're going to be working remotely. I didn't even know what that meant that day. We had laptops. We all had internet, so we could work remotely. But just said, stay away.

We were in that mode for two months. We opened our office May 18 but said it's optional if you return. I've been in there pretty much since. We've got Chris Waldsmith, who was our associate commissioner for finance. I think Chris has been in there literally every day. And by every day, I mean every day. We've got a lot of staff that have been in. We've probably been at half of our 40-member staff in in recent weeks as we've needed to pick up the pace, and I'll just point personally to them.

This doesn't happen because of me. It happens because of us, and whether they work in tickets or finance or compliance or our video operations to support officiating or officiating administration, communications, the commissioner's office, our conference office staff has really stepped up. They've had to encounter things never imagined.

I'll give them a lot of credit. The running, on a personal level to close it out, I started back to my gym on that Monday, so I work out at Iron Tribe Fitness and then the gyms closed. I spent five days not knowing what to do for my own health. I've lost 30 pounds since last March.

About a week later after the gyms closed I started running, and my goal was to run 35 minutes without stopping, which was in question that first day, I'll admit, and not to miss two consecutive days, and in April I started running every day, kind of like Forrest Gump did in the movie, and I didn't stop.

More than my physical health, it's helped me, I think, mentally and emotionally through this environment.

Q. Can I get your thoughts on the tournament setup in Indianapolis, if that's something you feel comfortable with and the league feels comfortable with or if there's anything you'd like to see done differently as teams get ready for Sunday and for next week?

GREG SANKEY: Mitch Barnhart is the chair, so Mitch and I have talked actively about and continuously about the planning. Derita Ratcliffe, who is the senior administrator, senior associate AD at Arkansas is on the women's basketball committee, so also have been attentive to what's been happening in San Antonio.

I think they're as prepared as can be, and I even called Dan Gavitt, and I've told this to Mitch and Derita, I thought in football the first two months of the season would be the hardest two months, starting, and when we got through the games and we moved through the games on Thanksgiving weekend we'd be so close to the finish line that everybody would be filled with hope and joy, that we would complete the season.

Actually what I found was the last month was in many ways the most challenging, some of the disruptions, running out of time, rescheduling, using the 19th. I said to Bill Hancock before the postseason, I've said to Dan Gavitt, just get ready, it's going to be the most challenging experience of your professional career.

Yeah, I think they're prepared. I'll share that I've told our coaches and administrators that the custom is to think about Selection Sunday Selection Monday, and you think about whether you're selected or not, whether you're seeded and what your site is going to be. I've said, okay, we need to think about selection, but even now without jinxing anything, everybody is superstitious, right, think past Selection Sunday; how do you prepare yourselves and your team for dealing with this structured environment.

I've provided encouragement to the NCAA where I'm able to, to Dan and to Mitch, and I just give them credit for how they've considered things.

I expect they're going to have to continue to adapt. We know that when we started we had to adapt. I think the good news for the Southeastern Conference teams is we've been in our own structured environment for months now. We again -- we have a third-party testing. Those aren't campus personnel. It's not your medical staff, and they're going to be going into an environment where it's not your medical staff, it's not your campus personnel engaging in testing and contact tracing.

So I'm as comfortable as can be in this environment. I think there will be more information developing. I think our teams are well prepared to go into it, and again, my encouragement has been to think beyond selection in a different way because you think about Selection Sunday and then Shorts Travel calls, you make your arrangements and you go and everything is kind of like it was. It's not going to be that way. Last week in Greenville for our women's teams, this week here for our men's teams, we're probably taking a moderated step from just their campus regular season into a little bit more structured reality here, and there will be another level of that next week.

But I think we're ready, and I am certainly hopeful that we'll be able to play through the three weeks in an uninterrupted fashion.

I hope I spoke to the question. If not I'll give you permission to follow up.

Q. How optimistic are you? You talked about this a little bit earlier, about in the fall having full attendance at these football games based on everything that's gone on in the country right now.

GREG SANKEY: Well, I've tried to approach this with a half-full perspective. I think some of the decision making last year for us was we set a course -- I've gone back through my notes kind of to evaluate my own performance. We said in April we want to continue forward and hope that otherwise will join us, and our preparation was always through the early part of the summer to play the season as scheduled with a very clear acknowledgment, that's not up to me, the circumstances around the virus will guide us.

Had you asked me that question maybe not on this day a year ago but like yesterday a year ago, I would have said, we'll have full stadiums, we'll play a 12-game schedule, we'll start on Labor Day Weekend, and I will say the same to you right now. Whether that's optimism or not, one will have to evaluate. I think that's reality.

We announced a schedule with 12 games, eight conference games starting on Labor Day Weekend. That's a plan. We know how to carry that plan out in a different way. While people are announcing their plans for stadiums, I think everyone is going to be in a situation of paying attention to what happens with vaccines, with these variants, with spread.

The good news is, really good news is rates are dropping while vaccinations are increasing, and that gives us hope to be back toward normal. I say that intentionally. I didn't say back to normal, I said back toward normal.

That is we're going to be playing, I think, football Labor Day Weekend. We'll be planning through the summer to see if that's possible. We'll have spring practices starting, strength and conditioning taking place, so that's back toward normal, and I have optimism that that can occur, and what happens with attendance, we'll plan and we'll announce and we'll recognize that the circumstances around the virus are going to guide us in that decision making.

Q. Can you just talk about the role that college football in particular has played and sports in general in helping America get through the pandemic? And another part of the question about attendance, are you worried that fans aren't going to come back in full force maybe because of the pandemic?

GREG SANKEY: So let me deal with the first question first, and that is the meaning of college football. One of the memorable moments for me, which will seem a bit odd given what's happening around us was on Monday, August 10th. We had an athletics directors' videoconference. That evening we had a presidents' and chancellors' videoconference. If you remember on Saturday of that week, so two days prior, the Mid-American Conference announced that it would not play football in the fall. That evening the Mountain West Conference communicated the same and the next day the Pac-12 and Big Ten announced that they would not play football in the fall of 2020.

On that Monday afternoon, we issued a statement from me that I'm not looking at the statement, so you'll probably have to go grab it if you want it word-for-word, but it said, we're going to continue moving forward with an effort to play football in the fall. We had moved our season back. We had done that in a very intentional manner. We had created the 10-game conference-only schedule. So we had set ourselves up, and we spread out preseason practice while delaying it at the same time.

So we were very intentional about our decision making.

When I issued that statement that we were going to continue forward, we weren't just going to stop, as others were, our social media monitoring, which usually on a Saturday around disagreements on officiating and things like that has not so kind words you can imagine, and the color red will dominate. So that's bad, right, those are bad words. It was dominated by the word "hope," and it was in green, and it was the word "hope."

I think I realized the importance of what we were trying to do. Externally I had heard from our football student-athlete leadership council the importance of wanting to play to them. One of the great quotes was from Alontae Taylor, who plays at Tennessee, who said, "I'll be swabbed every day if it means I get to play football on Saturday," and he said that at a time when we didn't even know what swabbing every day means. At that point it was up into your sinuses, right.

So I go back, to answer the first question, that the meaning and the substance of college football provided hope, and I think it was a connection to something normal after months of upheaval and abnormal. And just the fact we were going to keep trying. There were no promises made that day. There were no promises made the next week. We never told our student-athletes, I can guarantee anything. I erased some of the I-don't-knows I think as we worked with people to help us do so, but I could never over-promise, I just tried to perform, and I think we did that. I think we did that very well.

The memories I'll take away are here in basketball and in soccer and in football of young people either saying or dropping me a note to say thank you for giving us the opportunity. Nobody has come up to me and said I wish you hadn't given me this opportunity. It's always thanks.

The second question about will people stay away, you know, I can't hypothesize. I think what we've seen is people came to the extent they could, wanted to be a part of it. We saw not huge TV ratings for us, but we did see some uptick in viewership around the SEC Network, so we know the interest is still there. My sense is people want to gather when it's appropriate to do so. I think we're communal beings; we want relationship. We want to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, and college football certainly provides those types of experiences.

So while I can't, again, guarantee that people want to be back, it will depend on what the COVID environment is in the fall, first and foremost, what campus, local and state policies permit, what wisdom permits, and I think that last part has to be in place now. Sometimes we have to think about not just what can we do but what should we do, and that's certainly been part of my thinking.

But I think the connection, if the opportunity to get back towards normal is there, I expect that people want to rally around college football in the Southeastern Conference this fall.

Q. Have you thought about is there something in place, whether it be from the conference or the institutions themselves on helping student-athletes through mental health issues because of the pandemic, what they had to go through this season and those that might have opted out?

GREG SANKEY: I think there are a couple questions in there. First is the conference and our institutions doing things to support the mental health of our student-athletes. Absolutely. And we have been for years. In fact, some of you may recall observations I made I think two years ago at football media days about the need to be open and honest and transparent and communicating on mental wellness issues, mental health issues, and the efforts in place well before the pandemic to support mental well-being.

I'll go back to last May or June because from the conference standpoint we've worked to be more connected to our campus leaders in the mental wellness area, and just learning the uptick in outreach even by distance because those weren't in-person visits but the uptick in the requests for visits with our mental wellness, mental health professionals. So that's been at the forefront of what we do, and in fact as I look through my notes, I tweeted like the real-time notes in our early Thursday decision making. You flip the page, the first thing that showed up in our thinking was how do we care for student-athletes because the basis of your question is when we stopped everything on Thursday and Friday last year, I think all of us knew we were altering the foundation of young people's existence as student-athletes.

We were taking away the rhythm of their existence. We weren't doing in-person classes, in-person tutoring, in-person mental support. They weren't in the locker room with their teammates. All of that had an impact.

It was hard.

And then you fast forward into the summer, and I'm just going to continue the narrative because I think it's important to tell this story. As we were visiting with our leadership councils, the level of uncertainty that existed weighed on everyone, including me, and the questions were about, hey, can you answer this question or that question. I think it was important we said when we could, here's the answer, and when we couldn't, we don't know the answer. And in fact, you can go back to the Washington Post article that was written from a recorded 90-minute session between our football student-athletes and our doctors. Young people said, hey, these answers aren't good enough. That was a reflection of the uncertainty.

We never stopped trying to communicate with them. When you fast forward into July and August as the NCAA was cancelling its championships in the fall and making those decisions, our soccer and volleyball student-athletes were asking for some certainty. I go back and I've referenced this, for me as a leader I learned from a guy named Andy Stanley who leads a church in Atlanta. He had a podcast where he said in times of uncertainty what people need is clarity. Really in early August I began focusing on clear answers where we could, and where we couldn't we had to be honest with that. I think that plays into supporting mental wellness.

The ability to provide hope for our student-athletes and provide that connection of their normal lives was an important piece of mental well-being.

But you know what, people are tired. That last month of football season, it was hard because we were weary of being swabbed, of not knowing until Friday would we play games on Saturday. That's not the way it was supposed to be. That's not the deal I signed up for, right. Certainly not the deal I signed up for six years ago on this day when I was announced as commissioner here. But that's the reality we all had to work through.

I give the credit as I did earlier to young people who have moved through this. The reason I've said thank you is because they've made it possible in the difficulty.

And then the last part of your question, and I know this is a long answer, but I think I'm trying to help it tell a story of care in here and of support. You asked the question that even when what we've experienced is different, I don't know when it's over, but when it's different, are we still going to care. We started an internal mantra that was even if we can't play -- so last June and July we said, if we cannot play, what is it that we do. We educate, we care and we support.

I actually threw those words out in a staff meeting and I started saying them and then about a month into it I realized if I had said support, educate and care, I could make some kind of SEC acronym. But that's the honest answer is we've kept those three elements at the center of our conversations. Yep, we've challenged young people to improve, to perform, to participate, to up their game. That's what we normally do. But those support systems existed before. I think they've been enhanced during, and they will exist long after to guide our student-athletes forward.

I got so focused on answering your first question, which was a really important one, and I think it's important to all 14 of our campuses that I have a vague memory that you asked a second question in there, but I have no idea what it was at this point.

Q. I don't think I can remember it, either.

GREG SANKEY: Awesome. That's like the strategy. But I take the time to answer with care. For all the questions about revenue, and there may be some of those, ticket sales, full stadiums, I really commend our athletics programs for the continuous care, even in really challenging circumstances for young people, and that's not something I think that's noted sufficiently.

I also know when I walked out on that soccer field in Orange Beach for Arkansas and Vanderbilt's participation or championship game, both head coaches, we had played 10 games in the regular season, I think we've played 55 of 56 games as scheduled and then a 14 tournament, and they said that's enough. That's a sign of kind of the mental wear and tear that's present.

To Paul's question, the reason I've said to our coaches and our athletics directors to think past Selection Sunday is the need for a healthy mental state the next three and four weeks is critically important.

Q. A little bit off topic here, I know there was a report in December about a letter you had authored regarding delays with the NCAA infractions process saying it could be a crisis of confidence. I'm curious if in the months since then there's been anything that's kind of alleviated your concerns in that area, and what was kind of the inspiration for that communication and wanting to reach out in such a way?

GREG SANKEY: I'll start with kind of the second, which is I served nine years on the committee on infractions, the Division I committee on infractions, and you learn a lot. As I was concluding my term of service, the Commission on College Basketball had issued its report. You have the opportunity to take a step back and evaluate the strengths and the areas for enhancement, try to correct maybe misunderstandings, misperceptions.

I told NCAA leadership and NCAA staff involved in that activity that I was going to write what I called the white paper with my thoughts at some point. So that was -- I'm trying to think back, like summer of '19. I actually had an in-person meeting in Birmingham and said I'd do that. I wanted some time to go by and then we were hit by COVID, so my mind was taken over by just the day-to-day.

I now serve as the Autonomy Five Conference representative on the NCAA Division I council, and I think in October, November, we received a report on the new independent accountability review process, and I reached out in advance because as I prepared, I annotated a lot on that report that I thought was incomplete, not fully explained.

Now remember, these recent changes don't come from the membership, so I've wearied of the membership said. They come from councils, from commissions, from special task forces. It's not as if the 350 presidents get together and talk through issues or 350 faculty representatives and athletics directors like some of you remember the old days. And I accept the representative form of governance, in fact think it was a good adjustment.

But we're now at a place where over the last decade councils work in groups and commissions have made decisions that I don't think have been evaluated. I think they've been implemented. They've been celebrated at the time, but they've not been fully evaluated.

So as we went -- just so you understand the complete stories, we went into that process, I became a bit of a contrarian and said, my experience suggests some things need to be more fully discussed, and so the council engaged in another discussion. I think there was probably some more information shared from the NCAA national office staff, and I encouraged conferences to provide input, and I think the council position was, by sometime in early December, input was welcomed.

So that letter was an outcome from those discussions. Whether I was going to write a white paper or not, I took the conversations at the council level, wanted to make sure I met the deadline, wanted to fully develop, never thinking it would be public but knowing that that possibility was always there.

So to the second part of your question, in the last few months, have we resolved anything. No is the short answer. There is Division I infractions process review committee that now exists that was, I think, two years delayed in starting as I understand as an outcome of some of the commission on college basketball reports. I think most concerning is the issues at the center of the Southern District of New York review which then have lent themselves into NCAA infractions cases. Those activities took place four and five years ago, and we have no outcomes, no results.

I felt when I was on the committee -- so I'm not saying anything in that letter or now that I didn't say when I was a member of the committee on infractions, we have over-waited penalties. So you've seen the enforcement working group, the presidential review groups back in 2011, even the most recent statements about we have to be really aggressive in penalties, and we have under-valued the timely application of accountability.

I think that's an error, so that would be one piece that I think has to be dealt with.

The second is with all that's happened in this area, these dots are not connected. So we have -- we call them college basketball academies for future men's basketball players that were an out growth of the Commission on College Basketball and then we have a penalty matrix that was adopted with stronger penalties, and now we have an independent review process and a critical -- a complex case unit.

We have rules that we're enforcing that don't really seem to make much sense now, and I'll opine on one, which is we have what are called evaluation periods when we send coaches into high schools but they can't talk to anyone. That doesn't make sense anymore. When our coaches walk into high schools I think they should have conversations with high school students. We should foster the objective of enrolling in college, and I think being a student-athlete because of the value -- yet we've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and actually months and months and sometimes years enforcing some of these outdated rules. So we need to take a step back and figure out how should all of this process connect, where do we have to change, what can we do to have an effective timely efficient process that holds people accountable, respects due process that, yeah, provides outcomes.

The length of that answer will help you understand why it was an eight-page letter. I still think there's much to do. You know what, it's not a fun topic. People will tweet at me when I was the spokesperson for the committee on infractions. They'll disagree with outcomes on whatever case I served on for almost a decade. So it's not a fun topic, but there's a responsibility for the NCAA because we entrust the NCAA with administration of this process. We don't do it at the conference level anymore across the country, so we're entrusting the NCAA national office, the NCAA committees, the NCAA leadership with this role, and it's too important not to roll our sleeves up and to dig into the hard work.

Q. Moving forward do you foresee capacity at Hoover? What do you see that capacity being? And softball, as well. And then as we move forward, do you foresee the spring meetings taking place in Destin in person this year?

GREG SANKEY: Softball and baseball. So I would go back to just because we can doesn't mean we should, from my perspective around conference championships, and we are going to be careful in how we move forward. I from my decision making role where I control conference championship decision making am not going to put at risk our football season or our fall season by trying to have too many people around, and that's been my encouragement to our member universities and their athletics programs.

Certainly we can have more than what we experienced in the fall, but we need to be careful in how we do so.

And so right now I wouldn't predict just lifting all restraint in Hoover, so I'll stick to baseball for just a moment. But I would expect a little bit more than what I would have imagined two months ago.

My hope would be two months from now, because just think about decision making in this cycle, that if you asked me again I'd say, yeah, I think we can have more than we did in mid-March because we'll be two weeks out and we'll be in final decision making, but we're going to be careful about that.

And then your second question, spring meetings in Destin, we'll come to that conclusion here shortly. We have to make that decision sooner rather than later, so I can't live by my mantra to make major decisions, wait as long as possible, and we're going to be careful on that one, too. We're going to have to meet somehow. If we can do it in Destin, great. The notion today of having people in a basement conference room with hundreds of people in a hotel is one I've got to take a step back as soon as I present a trophy on Sunday and think through rapidly.

Q. I wondered how many Kentucky fans were among the people watching the games today, and how do you think Kentucky losing might impact attendance in the SEC Tournament for the rest of it?

GREG SANKEY: Well, we're at what, about 3,400 capacity for our tournament, right around 20 percent or so. There was, as there has been a lot of blue, but you know what, there is a great fan base. When I start at the top at the University of Alabama, won the regular season. I watched the Arkansas-Kentucky Georgia Dome I think '95 championship, you were probably there, so hopefully I have my year right, that was full of blue and red. I lived in Dallas during the Reunion Arena days when the raise or back fans filled up Reunion Arena. You can move through our standings and pick up whoever may play out. I think the great thing about Nashville, it's a very accessible city, and I would anticipate we'll have right around 3,000 people the rest of the way no matter who's playing.

You know what, I know Kentucky fans well enough that we'll still have some blue in here the rest of the weekend, too, because they enjoy SEC basketball themselves.