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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYSJuly 26, 2006Mike SliveBIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA THE MODERATOR: We'll get started with the commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, Mike Slive. He'll have statements here for you. COMMISSIONER SLIVE: Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen. Welcome to kickoff 2006, the Southeastern Conference's football media days, which marks the beginning of our 74th football season. The fact that we have over 700 people in attendance over a three-day period in the heat of late July makes our football media days a unique and special event, one we look forward to every year. On a personal note, I especially appreciate y'all coming today to help me celebrate my birthday. I thought by mentioning that today is my birthday, your questions might be a little easier as the day goes by, but they won't be, and they shouldn't be. A year from now we'll celebrate a different birthday, the Southeastern Conference's 75th year. Now, Charles tells me that the 75th year is known as the - are you ready - the demi-sesquicentennial celebration. So that's what we'll be doing here next year. We are going to kick it off here at media days in 2007. As is our custom, before we look into the current season, I want to take a brief look back at 2005 and 2006. It was a good year for the conference. It was a year marked by tragedy and sadness, as well. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita wreaked havoc in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, causing unimaginable destruction and dislocation. The heroic efforts of many, including student-athletes, coaches and administrators, as well as the SEC's million dollar donation, were important contributions to a massive relief effort. LSU played a significant role in the recovery effort, utilizing every resource available to them to lessen the suffering of others, as did our other institutions by enabling students to enroll and attend when they were unable to stay at their home institutions. Contributing to the sadness of this past year was the loss of two dear friends, SEC Associate Commissioner Brad Davis, who many of you knew. He was with the conference for 18 years, and Tom Mickel, Executive Director of the Capital One Bowl. Their lives were cut short in their prime. As we begin to celebrate a new year, we remember them today. Notwithstanding these difficult events, the SEC won six national championships, and six of our schools finished at runners-up to national champions. In basketball, a great moment to remember for all of us, was LSU joining national champion Florida in the men's Final Four, and LSU women's basketball team also in the Final Four. In short, in 10 of the 20 sports the SEC sponsors, we were either the national champion or the national champion runner-up. 71 of our student athletes won individual national championships, and 460 were first team All-Americans. 159 SEC teams participated in NCAA post-season play last year, which represents two-thirds of all the teams in the league. Simply put, the SEC continues to be the best broad-based athletic conference for men and women in the country. In football last season, the SEC finished with five teams ranked in the final AP and USA Today top 25 polls. Interesting to note, since 1999, this was the first time that the SEC had five teams ranked in the USA Today top 16, and since 1997 five teams ranked in the top 14 of the AP poll. As you've come to expect, and you hear this every year, the SEC led all conferences in total and average attendance as well as percent of stadium capacity in 2005. In SEC home games, the league's teams drew a total of 5.6 million fans, an average of 75,000 per contest, filling our stadiums to 97 and a half percent of capacity. Charles tells me that it was interesting to know that the SEC had 261 of its former student-athletes appear on 2005 NFL opening weekend rosters, the most of any conference in the nation. Nine of our players were selected for the 2006 Pro Bowl. In 2005 and 2006, we continued to provide substantial net revenue to our member institutions for use in supporting their broad-based athletic programs. We provided a total of $124 million to our institutions, the highest total in SEC history. This support gives nearly five thousand men and women, student-athletes, the chance to compete at the highest level of intercollegiate athletics. On the all-important academic side, I am pleased to report that more than 2100 student-athletes representing 40% of all of our student-athletes earned SEC academic honor roll status. The NCAA's top 8 Award, given annually to eight outstanding senior student-athletes, has been awarded to 16 SEC student-athletes during the last nine years. No other conference has had as many student-athletes so honored. During the last four years, the SEC has had more student-athletes honored as academic All-Americans than any other conference. And we're particularly proud of Rudy Niswanger, the SEC's McWhorter Scholar Award student-athlete of the year, named the nation's top student-athlete and awarded the academic Heisman, the Vincent DePaul Draddy Award by the National Football Foundation. Enough about the past. Looking ahead to this fall, first, we have all 12 head football coaches returning for the first time since 1988. That made for a very happy spring meeting of our football coaches. It was tantamount to a reunion. But one person not returning is Bobby Gaston, who retired as our coordinator of football officials after 50 years of dedicated service to this league as an official observer and as a coordinator. We've had a chance to honor Bobby on two occasions, once in Destin and once in our office. We'll miss Bobby for many reasons, not the least of which are his annual remarks to you during media days. I think some of you will remember this. I still remember sitting up here last year while Bobby explained the nuances of the new instant replay system, including the restaurant-like signal device used to communicate with the officials from the booth. I can see some of you remembering and smiling. Bobby described in colorful detail his warning to officials about where and where not to put these devices during the game (smiling). We were pleased to have Rogers Redding begin his tenure as the SEC's new coordinator. He has officiated in the SEC from 1994 to 2003, and served as an observer and an instant replay official last year. He's worked eight post-season Bowl games, including three national championship games. He's renowned for his knowledge of NCAA football rules, and for the last 15 years has been the author of a publication entitled Redding's Study Guide to NCAA football rules. He's got a distinguished academic background, including a doctorate in physical chemistry. He's taught as a professor of physics, and he's been a Pro Bowls. I know you're here somewhere, and we welcome you aboard. One change in our program is that from now on, Rogers, as a full-time coordinator, will be full-time, year-round, working out of the SEC office. You'll meet with him tomorrow morning about 8:30 to talk about rule changes, instant replay, including some details about the new change which includes the coaches' challenge. You can talk to Rogers about that. Speaking of changes, the six-win Bowl eligibility rule is backs. You remember that when we had 12-game seasons under the old format, we had a six-game rule. That is now back on a permanent basis, which means that a conference team with six wins in a 12-game season is eligible to play in a Bowl in which the conference has a contractual relationship. In order to be eligible to fill at-large Bowl openings where the conference does not have a contractual relationship, a team must have seven wins in a 12-game season. As I mentioned last year, this year we begin a new four-year cycle with eight Bowl partners. We obviously continue as the host conference in the Sugar Bowl, as we've been for decades after decades, and we're glad to be able to return to New Orleans in the Allstate Sugar Bowl, unless our champion finished first or second in the BCS standings and plays in a national championship game. Our Bowl partners in alphabetical order, in addition to the BCS, are the AT&T Cotton Bowl in Dallas, the AutoZone Liberty Bowl in Memphis, which is a new bowl game for us replacing the Houston Bowl, the Capital One Bowl in Orlando, the Chick-Fil-A Bowl in Atlanta, the Gaylord Hotel Music City Bowl in Nashville, Independence Bowl in Shreveport, and the Outback Bowl in Tampa. This year, the BCS begins a new format. I'm just going to go through some of the sort of fundamental changes in the BCS. Those of you who want to talk more about that can talk with me about it over the next three days. As you know, this is my turn as the BCS coordinator, so it's my two years in the box. We've started already as we moved towards this new format. We begin a new format with four Bowls, Fiesta, Orange, Rose, and Sugar, that will be played every year. We have two television partners, FOX and ABC. Then the BCS National Championship game will be placed on a rotating basis about a week after the four Bowls are played. So this year in Phoenix, the BCS national championship game will be played on January 8, the other Bowls would be played on 1, 2 and 3. In talking with many of you, it's become clear to us that there still remains substantial confusion in the public about the change to this format and what it really means. My guess is that because the format lends itself to a so-called plus one, there's a tendency to think that the four Bowl games will lead into this game, and that's just not the case. What will happen is on Sunday, December 3rd, following championship Saturday, the teams finishing 1 and 2 in the BCS standings earn a berth to the national championship game played on January 8. Then the four Bowls will then select the teams according to the BCS selection process. Another change is beginning on October 15 this year, BCS standings will be announced on FOX on Sundays following NFL telecasts rather than on Mondays as it has been in the past. In terms of automatic qualification, the six original BCS conferences will automatically qualify for BCS berths, as will Notre Dame if it finishes eighth or higher in the BCS standings. One team from the former coalition conferences will qualify automatically if it's a champion and it finishes 12 or higher in the BCS standings, or 16th or higher if that team ranks higher than a champion from an original BCS conference. So, for example, last year, if this process had been in place, with Florida State, the ACC champion, ranked at 22, and TCU ranked at 14, then TCU would have been automatically eligible -- would have been selected automatically for the BCS, whereas if all the original BCS conference teams finished 12 or higher, then 12 would be the cutoff. Now, a team that's not an automatic selection but finishes 14th or higher in the BCS standings and has nine wins is eligible to be selected at-large. This is a change. Last year a team had to have nine wins and finish in the top 12. We moved to 14 to reflect the fact that with the fifth Bowl, there are two additional slots to be filled. The composition of the BCS standings will not change. It will be made up of the same three components, the Harris pole, the coaches pole, and the computer pole, with each component being given equal weight. If you have questions, I'll be more than happy, I'll be here for all three days, I'd be more than happy to talk to you on an individual basis. There are several questions implied in a lot of this. Before I conclude, I want to go back to the SEC and just mention three important initiatives that took place this past year. One is the proposal 9A, adopted by the conference at this year's spring meeting, the second is the status report on the SEC academic consortium, and the third is the concept of an SEC television channel. The legislation known as proposal 9A as unanimously adopted by our league during spring meetings. It represents the conference's continuing effort to be certain that when student-athletes enter our institution, their secondary schoolwork has prepared them adequately to succeed in the classroom. The legislation provides a series of triggers which initiate a careful review of a prospect's academic record. A review board on the campus will review the record, report to the president or chancellor as to a recommendation as to eligibility, and then that report from the president will come to the conference office for review when a determination about the student-athlete's eligibility for competition in the Southeastern Conference. We can make available to you copies of this legislation if it would be helpful to you as you think about it. Charles can work that out for you. This fall, one of our campuses will be announced as the home of the SEC's new academic consortium. As you know, we launched it in the fall of 2004 to provide our member institutions with a mechanism to advance our collective academic goals by sharing academic resources for the benefit of our student-athletes. So this fall, we have several institutions that submitted an RFP. Our presidents and chancellors will take a recommendation from our pro host. We'll announce where the consortium will be housed. It will be on one of our campuses, then the consortium will begin to tie together the academic and other resources of our member institutions so that basically we're operating on two levels: an athletic level and an academic level. Finally, the SEC has been exploring the idea of an SEC television channel for the last two years, knowing that our television contracts with CBS, ESPN, Lincoln Financial, formerly known to you as Jefferson Pilot, and FSN South, still have several years to run. In football, we still have the '06, '07 and '08 seasons. In our other sports, we have through the '08, '09 academic year. We're going to continue to explore this concept very seriously, taking into consideration the current distribution of our games over the air waves, the every changing world of technology, and the needs of our region and the needs of our fans. One attraction is that in addition to televising intercollegiate athletic contests, there are other offerings made by our institution, such as lectures, forums, concerts, dramatic productions that would give us a conference-wide outlet. That certainly is an attraction. As you can see, it's been a busy and in some ways sad, but very satisfying year, for us. As we pull together, we worked our way through some difficult times. But we look forward to a very exciting and better 2006 and '07. We appreciate your being here. We look forward to the season which kicks off in 38 days. Who's counting (smiling)? I hope your work goes well today, tomorrow, and Friday. As they say, may the muse be with you. Thank you very much.
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