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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYSJuly 23, 2008Mike SliveBIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA CHARLES BLOOM: We're ready to start the 2008 Southeastern Conference Football Media Days. My name is Charles Bloom. I'm the associate commissioner of the Southeastern Conference. We would like to welcome you to the SEC Football Media Days. We are ready to get started with Commissioner Slive. He'll address you and then makes the rotation, as do all the other coaches and players. We're glad that you're here. We look forward to servicing you this week. COMMISSIONER SLIVE: Thank you, Charles. Let me add my welcome to that of Charles. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 2008 SEC Football Media Days. Once again, you are part of the largest group to attend this ever-expanding event. There are over 850 of you here and approximately 750 credentialed media. In addition, we've got 25 to 30 radio stations broadcasting live over this three-day period. I think it's safe to say that there's no other media event in college sports anywhere near this one. Five years ago I told you that the SEC would not have any institution on probation as of today. We came close. Only the Arkansas track program is on probation as we speak. While I take some solace in the fact we are far better off than we were six years ago, there is disappointment when we were so darn close. This disappointment, however, is tempered by the substantial progress we have made in this very important area. And this progress is the direct result of the conference's adoption of the task force report in 2004. Many of you were there and I'm certain remember it. And for me the unconditional support of our presidents and chancellors and our athletic directors. As I have said to many of you in many of our conversations over the past year, the most satisfying accomplishment in my six years as commissioner is that we have tackled the infraction problems head on, while at the same time arguably enjoying the most sustained competitive athletic success in the history of this conference. And as we look ahead, and of course if we believe that history teaches, we can anticipate one or more of our institutions making a mistake. And that will happen. But what's different is how our institutions handle these matters: with honesty and with integrity. And that's what we do now. So in life, progress is two steps forward and on occasion one step back. But in six years, ladies and gentlemen, we have made extraordinary progress. I'll talk about that again when we begin to talk with television and the media interest in our future television packages. At the end of this academic year, the conference's television contracts with CBS, ESPN, Raycom Sports and FSN South come to term. With that in mind, over the past two years, the conference has been considering its television and multimedia options which include the possibility of an SEC Channel and the possibility of the more traditional granting of rights. During this time we've had the advantage of watching the Mountain West Conference's channel known as The Mountain, the Big-10 network and the NFL Network, as they tackle a variety of issues. We will make a final decision this fall, a full year before the existing contracts expire, giving us a year to implement the new agreements in whichever direction we decide to go. I thought it might be helpful for you to know what the criteria are as we consider this in making a comparative analysis of the two options. They include the ability to improve national distribution for all of our sports, the ability to enhance the SEC brand nationally, the opportunity to provide a window for non-athletic programming, particularly academic programming, the ability to maximize multimedia distribution in the new digital world. And, finally, the ability to increase revenue distribution to our member institutions in support of their broad-based men's and women's athletic programs. Until the conference makes a final decision, there is not much more I can share with you, other than to say, we have been very gratified with the level of interest in the SEC shown by television and multimedia distributors. And the question is obviously why. The conference's ability to build and maintain successful relationships with media partners is due to a combination of factors. The factors include the significant public interest in the Southeastern Conference, the passion and the loyalty of our fans, the prestige of the conference's member institutions, most of them flagship institutions and academically prominent, the successful effort to conduct our programs in the boundaries of the NCAA and the SEC that I alluded to earlier, and our sustained competitive success at the highest levels of intercollegiate athletic competition. The evidence of competitive success in football and beyond is demonstrated by the following. LSU's 2007 national championship is the SEC's third in six years and its fourth in 10 years. We're the first conference to win consecutive BCS titles and the only conference, as you know, to have five head football coaches who have won national championships. We are 11-4 all time in BCS Bowl games and we've won four in the last two years. Our seven Bowl wins last year is the most ever for any conference in NCAA history. LSU and Georgia finished 1-2 in the AP poll, marking the first time the second has accomplished that feat, and the first time for any conference since the Big-8 did it in 1971. Five of our teams were ranked in the top 15 of the final AP poll and five in the 16 in the coaches poll, the most of any conference. We have an 82% winning percentage in non-conference games, and with 47 wins, the most in our history. Our student-athletes won 12 individual national awards, and for the first time two SEC football student-athletes, Tim Tebow and Darren McFadden, were named the national Player of the Year in the same season. We had six players drafted in the first round of the NFL, and we had 263 players on the 2007 NFL opening day active roster, the most of any conference. As has become our custom, we drew 6.6 million people to our games, the most in history. In addition to football, we won three other national championships in gymnastics and tennis by Georgia, and for the second consecutive year Tennessee won the national championship in women's basketball. We sent 75% of all of our teams in all of our sports to NCAA post-season competition. That's incredible. We had 457 student-athletes named All-Americans. And as of today, 150 former or current SEC student-athletes will participate in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Away from the field of competition, I just want to take one minute to talk about two initiatives that we have made substantial progress on that are important to the conference away from the playing field. The first, and some of you may remember when we inaugurated the Southeastern Conference's academic consortium several years ago, the consortium, we dedicated the building of the consortium on the University of Arkansas's campus this year, fully operational with its own building with a full-time coordinator. We have realized our goal. I would say for me a dream of tying together the academic strengths of our institutions so that all of our students can benefit from the education, research and resources available, not just where they go to school, but throughout all 12 of our institutions. The second initiative that we continue to make progress in is the very important area of ethnic diversity. As exemplified by the hiring of Trent Johnson as LSU's head men's basketball coach, and the appointment of Joker Phillips, as Kentucky's head football coach designate. This past spring from Phoenix, the conference hosted the minority football coach always forum, sponsored by the original BCS six conferences. We gave the opportunity for 20 minority football coaches to work for two days with athletic directors in these conferences, the decision makers, and to give them an opportunity to get to be known in a way they otherwise could not. In addition, Charles attributed a database he does every year of all minority football coaches in IA and IAA to all the conferences in the country and to our institutions. Over the years the Southeastern Conference has benefited from extensive media coverage for many reasons. Not the least of which is the result of the good work of Charles Bloom and his media relations staff. Our philosophy is that we are here to help you do your jobs as best we can and be as accessible as possible. We are very aware of and sensitive to the changing media environment, particularly as it impacts the print media, brought about by technological change and the fact that anyone, anyplace, any time can try to be a sportswriter (laughter). I'll let the comment in my mind go by. We very much appreciate the fact that you are here and that you are here in person and that we have the opportunity and the privilege to work with all of you face to face. We are in uncertain times in the ever-changing world of media. I see it every day as I scan newspapers, read the Internet and talk with you. I can only understand how this uncertainty weighs heavily on each of you, both personally and professionally. The impact of change is felt by us as well. What avenues of communication do we use to provide information to our fans? Who gets credentials? How does the new media impact our rights holders. There's a hundred questions like that that you and I and us will have to face and address in the months and years ahead. I don't know if I have an answer, but I think it's very important that working together in intercollegiate athletics that we acknowledge it and are sensitive to it from our point of view and from your point of view. In the midst of this uncertainty, we also know that sometimes media access to student-athletes and coaches is limited. This is an issue for many of you. To that end, we have worked closely with Ron Higgins, the president of the football writers, as he works on your behalf to gain more access. And I think parenthetically it's fair to say this is clearly a passion for Ron. This spring we provided Ron the opportunity to come to Destin and meet with our athletic directors, our coaches and media relations directors to outline his and your concerns about access. The conference office through Charles put together a proposed conference-wide media policy for consideration. Needless to say, it generated debate amongst all groups, particularly one group. And the debate on occasion was heated. The First Amendment in the SEC was alive and well in Destin. But we left Destin willing to consider the policy during our upcoming meetings. This proposal, or some variation of it, was designed to foster dialogue, not just within the SEC but throughout the nation, to serve as a catalyst for not only our people but for all the folks involved in football and college athletics to think about what's going on in this ever-changing media world. Whether we adopt this proposal or some variation of this proposal, our goal is to continue to service you in a way that is beneficial to all parties and at the same time does not disrupt the academic and athletic lives of our student-athletes. To this end, the Southeastern Conference will initiate and implement the following measures effective immediately: One, each conference institution will conduct a pre-season media training and seminar for student-athletes and coaches. The importance of positive media relationships, understanding that everything you do and write isn't everything we love to see, but that doesn't matter. We want positive media relationships with our coaches, our players and with you, and we will emphasize with our folks that they have the personal responsibility to deal with you folks while being in the public eye and that they represent the team, the institution, the conference, and themselves. Two, the conference will create an ongoing working group made up of representatives of the media, athletic directors, coaches and media relations directors. It will meet by teleconference with the goal of discussing and resolving issues of concern to the media and to our institutions. Charles will lead this group. Three, the conference through its media relations directors and this working group will review the issues as they arise and attempt to deal with them on a timely basis. This will be followed by a year-end review for the purpose of initiating change in the coming year. This is a good-faith effort on our part to work proactively with you on issues you confront every day and understanding and being concerned about the changes that are going on and affecting your lives. We want to be able, ladies and gentlemen, to meet you and see you eye-to-eye as often as we possibly can. On another subject, there has been confusion about a recent amendment that the conference made to its bylaws with respect to student-athlete eligibility, with some reports indicating the conference has relaxed its academic standards. In fact, the opposite is true. I want to take this opportunity to clear up that confusion. As you may know, and some of this is more than a lot of you want to know, the NCAA revised its bylaws several years ago to eliminate the status known as partial qualifier, leaving only two classes of student-athletes: qualifier and non-qualifier, which are determined based on a student-athlete's high school academic credentials. This spring, the conference revised its bylaws effective August the 1st of this year to maintain standards more stringent than the NCAA standards governing the enrollment of non-qualifiers. In addition to modifying the labels describing a student-athlete's initial eligibility status, the NCAA's initial eligibility index was extended to include the full range of possible standardized test scores. A 2.0 high school GPA was established as the minimum for a student-athlete to be a qualifier, and the number of required high school core courses was increased, first from 13 to 14, and now to the new requirement of 16. It is inappropriate to associate this legislative change with any individual student-athlete or prospective student-athlete. Rather the revision is based on the need to update SEC rules to properly reflect new NCAA standards and to ensure accommodation of individuals challenged by learning disabilities. These revised bylaws, known to most of us as Proposal 1, make it clear that only a limited number of recruited student-athletes who are non-qualifiers at the time of enrollment at an SEC institution may become eligible to compete in the SEC and that each of those limited number of student-athletes may become eligible only if he or she presents an average high school GPA of at least 2.0 as certified by the NCAA and at least 12 core courses. The institution submits a special report to the conference known as Proposal 9A, and a prospective student-athlete who was a non-qualifier and who does not meet these standards can enroll as a first-year student in the SEC at an institution in our league, but cannot later become eligible for SEC competition. Another path to eligibility is available for such a student-athlete, however. He or she can enroll in junior college and become eligible as a transfer student. For those interested in more, we have prepared a document comparing the old and new provision of SEC Bylaw 14.3, and that's available to you outside on the table after we finish. Taking a quick look at the national scene. In January, I was released from the penalty box, otherwise known as the coordinator of the BCS (smiling). Unfortunately, there was not the necessary support for further consideration of the plus-one model. A lot of us have talked about this over the years. In my mind, the plus-one satisfied the three principles I have always espoused, it protects the regular season, maintains the Bowl system, and retains the academic mission and schedule of our institutions. Nonetheless, the plus-one concept is now in the public domain and will serve as the basis of comparison for you and fans each December when the games are announced. I want to thank you all for the dialogue. I promised dialogue during my two years. I think we hit. I want to thank all of you for that. As I said in the press conference following the meeting in Florida, the review and analysis of the plus-one is a marathon, not a sprint. One good thing came from it, though. It's good experience for me as the BCS coordinator, as I train to become the chair of the NCAA's Men's Basketball Committee beginning this fall and culminating with the Final Four in Detroit. So that's one positive that came. In closing, throughout the past year, we celebrated the conference's 75th anniversary by paying tribute to the SEC student-athlete experience. We did it through the inspiring messages set forth in our stories of character. These stories paid tribute to some of our former student-athletes who benefited from competing in our league and in intercollegiate athletics because they could then apply the lessons they learned competing to their lives long after they were unable to play. This is and continues to be the conference's most important legacy. During the coming year, five thousand student-athletes will compete in the SEC and they will launch the next chapter in the SEC's history. Our commitment to them remains the same: to provide all student-athletes with a chance to compete for the national championship in their chosen sport and to provide them with a quality education that leads to graduation. We hope this opportunity provides them a chance to overcome obstacles many of them have faced in their earlier lives and some of them continue to face by developing in them the kind of character that will lead to a life of satisfaction, contentment and service, the kind of life that all of us in this room aspire to. We are committed to ensure that this legacy lives on. A final note. I would be very remiss if I did not publicly acknowledge the work of our conference staff under the able leadership of Mark Womack in dealing with the tornado that ripped through the Georgia Dome during our men's basketball tournament. The grace under pressure they displayed was an example of extraordinary teamwork as they worked in cooperation with our athletic directors, coaches, the Georgia Tech and the Georgia dome staffs and our television partners. Although many fans were unable to attend the game in person, this team of ours made it possible to complete the tournament in a very safe environment. So thanks, guys, for a job well done. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of all of us in the SEC, I thank you for being here today. As always, may the muse be with you. Thank you. End of FastScripts |
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