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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYSJuly 25, 2007Mike SliveBIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA CHARLES BLOOM: We'd like to welcome you to the 2007 Southeastern Conference Football Media Days. As we celebrate our 75th year, one of the major reasons of the successes we've had in the SEC is because of the amount of media coverage that we've received through the 75 years, and we're thankful and grateful for your coverage of the Southeastern Conference. Without further ado, commissioner Mike Slive will be here on the podium. Commissioner. COMMISSIONER SLIVE: Thank you, Charles. Ladies and gentlemen, let me add my welcome to that of Charles, and also my thanks for all that you do for the Southeastern Conference. We think a lot about it, and we appreciate it very much. Today, it's a little bit different for us. Not only are we welcoming in the 2007 football season, but we're going to celebrate the launch of the SEC's 75th anniversary celebration. More on that later. As Charles pointed out, today you're part of history. This is the largest group ever to attend SEC Football Media Days. There are over 800 people in attendance, including 600 credentialed media and 25 radio stations broadcasting live over the three days. There is no other media day like it. These are good times to be the commissioner of the Southeastern Conference. We are the first conference in history to win all in the same year national championships in football, women's basketball and men's basketball, and in men's basketball we've done it two years in a row. As if this wasn't enough, conference teams have won five more national championships: men's swimming, women's swimming, bowling, gymnastics and men's tennis. These eight national championships were won by five different SEC institutions. This means, ladies and gentlemen, that we won national championships in over one-third of the sports the SEC sponsors. In football we sent nine teams to Bowl games, including two to the BCS, resulting in six wins. the most Bowl victories in conference history. Florida's win over Ohio State in the national championship game was the third championship for the SEC since the inception of the BCS in 1998, and our fifth national championship in 15 years, putting us ahead of all conferences. Our fans responded as they have for the last 26 years. We had the largest total attendance of any conference in the nation. Over 75,000 fans came to each game on average, which means that 6.5 million people attended SEC football games last fall, filling our stadiums to 96% of capacity. One of the things we take great pride in is our broad-based programs, and to that end we sent 159 teams to NCAA post-season play, which means over 75% of our teams went to post-season. On a personal note, 2006 and 2007 marks another anniversary: the end of my first five years as commissioner of the SEC. As I said at the outset, these are great times to be the commissioner of this great conference, as evidenced by the impressive competitive successes that we've just talked about. But they're only part of the story. There's more to it - much more. We have reestablished ourselves as the best competitive athletic conference in the country, and we did it by walking straight down Main Street, not by wandering through side streets. When I first spoke to you five years ago in 2002, I talked about the challenges that we faced to be the preeminent conference that we were and that we wanted to be, challenges such as rules compliance, the need for more diversity, the need for shared governance, the need for more academic success, the need to continue financial security, and making sure that we had a significant voice in national intercollegiate academic and athletic affairs. Thanks to the support of our presidents and chancellors, athletic directors, coaches, and so many others - and student-athletes, of course - we've made progress in each of these areas while continuing to win. In the area of compliance, I predicted that in five years, at this time next year, football media days 2008, we would have none of our institutions on probation. Will we make it? Well, there's many a slip between the cup and the lip, but we'll see. The procedures we inaugurated - those of you may remember back in 2004 when we issued our task force report on compliance and enforcement. Those principles have been instrumental in helping us achieve our goals, but we need to remain vigilant. The SEC is tough - I don't need to tell you that - and highly competitive, but we cannot let up. We cannot fall back in the name of winning. We are not about winning at all costs, and the ends do not justify the means. In the other areas I am very pleased that we are more diverse, that we worked together in governance of the conference, that our student-athletes are performing better in the classroom with more academic support, and we continue to implement the national academic reform package. I'm pleased that we have record distributions and that we're financially sound and that we are well-represented in national governing bodies, giving us the opportunity to help shape the future of intercollegiate athletics. An example: the SEC played a lead role in dealing with those secondary schools that were not properly educating prospective student-athletes. We developed conference oversight legislation in support of this effort, and our institutions were willing to allow us to do that. So it's been a great five years for me. It's been fun, it's been working with great people, and I look forward to more. But it's not enough to think back and sort of bask in the glow of whatever successes we've had. We must continue to think strategically and be prepared to successfully negotiate new challenges that inevitably arise, some of which we can anticipate, and when you read the newspapers yesterday and today, some of which we cannot. Examples are television, for us post-season football, student-athlete behavior, and our efforts to build the SEC academic consortium to be as powerful and strong on the academic side as we are on the athletic side. All but one of our television agreements come to term at the end of the 2008/2009 academic year. Our presidents and chancellors and athletic directors have authorized us to continue to explore the viability of an SEC network. As you all know, both the Mountain West and the Big-10 have initiated their own channels. We are keeping our eye on the progress that each is making. The concept of new media as a result of the unprecedented explosion in technology makes the matrix of event distribution interesting, to say the least. Where does the event end and where does the blogging begin? I know that's an issue that's close to your heart, and obviously one close to ours. Charles was saying earlier, we are very interested in getting together and hopefully putting together a group of you with our people and sitting down and trying to make sure that we in the SEC develop policies that are productive for you and that are fair to everyone involved. We will begin that initiative sometime early this fall. On the post-season front, I've been asked about a story that ran a couple weeks ago, which talked about future post-season college football formats. The story, quoting unnamed sources, said that support was steadily growing for a plus-one format. Last January at a media gathering of the football writers in Phoenix, I reiterated what I had said a year before: that we in the SEC are very open-minded about a plus-one format, and we plan to carefully evaluate it over the next year. Some of you know at our spring meetings, our presidents and chancellors again stated they opposed a playoff. At the same time they authorized Chancellor Khayat from Ole Miss, who was our representative on the BCS presidential oversight committee, to work with me to evaluate within the structure whether a change is needed. We will do that, keeping in mind the parameters that I have reiterated to you over and over again, which are: the importance of the regular season, our continued support of the Bowl system, and our commitment to keep college football a one-semester sport. Off-the-field behavior of some student-athletes remains an issue of ongoing concern. Most of you know that in 2005 the conference initiated a program known as the Mentors in Violence Prevention, otherwise known as the MVP program. That program provides student-athletes, coaches and administrators with a safe environment in which they can discuss sensitive matters relating to off-field behavior. We are a leader in implementing this program on a conference-wide basis. It is not a panacea, but it does provide a foundation for our institutions to help student-athletes better cope with their visible roles in our campuses and in our communities. One of the projects that I take great pride in, and maybe you can tell from my comments before, is the SEC academic consortium, which is now fully operational. By vote of our presidents and chancellors, the consortium is housed at the University of Arkansas, and its leadership is provided by provost and academic vice presidents with assistance from full-time executive directors. It's a new forum. It gives our academic leaders in the SEC a chance to share information and discuss academic issues of critical importance to the growth and development of our athletes and our student-athletes and students generally. We have a training program for future academic leaders, and one of the early initiatives is a study-abroad program. For example, if you have a son or daughter at one of our institutions that doesn't provide study abroad in a certain country, and another one of our institutions do it, then it's very simple for our student to go to that particular program. So that's the nature of what we're trying to do. It's something that we're very, very pleased about. Shifting gears for a minute, taking you back in history to February 1933, when presidents of 13 institutions met in Birmingham and Atlanta to finalize plans for a new intercollegiate athletic conference. The original membership of the SEC was made up of 13 institutions from the Southern Conference. Ten of those institutions remain. The other original members were Suwannee, Tulane and Georgia Tech. Some of you are history buffs. You might be interested to know that while these men were forming the Southeastern Conference, some of you may be old enough, though I'm not sure, was being founded, president Roosevelt was inaugurated as our 32nd president. He launched a New Deal that same year to offset the impact of the Depression. Across the ocean, Hitler became the chancellor of Germany. In sports, the first baseball All-Star Game was played. We've been talking about technology. FM radio was patented, and the first electronic TV receiver was developed in 1933. For those of you who are movie buffs, actress Faye Raye struggled with King Kong on top of the Empire State Building. The Chicago World's Fair opened, the first concrete was poured into the Hoover Damn, and the Tennessee Valley Authority was created, as was the game of Monopoly. A loaf of bread would have cost you eight cents, and you could buy a two-story house with three bedrooms and two baths with a mortgage payment of $45 a month. As we begin the celebration of our 75th anniversary, our hope is that the years ahead will continue to fulfill our mission of providing student-athletes with opportunities to compete, to learn life's lessons that cannot be taught in the classroom, and to help them develop the kind of character that will lead them to a life of satisfaction, contentment and contribution to the world in which they live. As we look back, we found SEC student-athletes have flown into space, saved lives, researched diseases, developed new technologies, rebuilt cities, governed states, protected their country, rallied a trouble nation, inspired children. They have broken race and gender barriers and stood up for their beliefs. They have pioneered sports and championed causes. They have forced historical firsts and created lasting impressions. These stories of character, ladies and gentlemen, is what it's all about. And they serve as the theme of our 75th anniversary celebration. During the year, through television, radio, Internet and print, we will feature 75 former student-athletes telling their stories through the voices of esteemed storytellers, such as a former United States president and Olympic gold medalist, best-selling authors and well-known musicians and television and film personalities, each of whom share a passion for their SEC institution and for the stories they impart. The Southeastern Conference is proud to celebrate 75 years of the student-athlete experience and the promise of the future. So if you would, please direct your attention to the screen for a very short 60-second preview of our 75th anniversary celebration. (Video Shown.) COMMISSIONER SLIVE: A brief summary of the 75th anniversary celebration is included in the information you received at registration, and members of our staff and the creative team are here to help you giving you any more detail you might like. Profiles of all 75 stories of character are available online at secsports.com. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being here and good luck the next few days. I will be here all throughout the entire three days. If there are things you'd like to talk with me about, I'd be more than happy to talk with you one-on-one or in a group. Again, as we say every year, may the muse continue to be with you. End of FastScripts |
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