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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYS

July 22, 2009

HOOVER, ALABAMA

CHARLES BLOOM: We'll get our 2009 Media Days started. First of all, a welcome to all of you here from the Southeastern Conference. My name is Charles Bloom, the Associate Commissioner for media relations.
We are glad to have you here as part of our SEC Football Media Days.
We'll have Commissioner Slive, then a presentation from ESPN, and our first coach this afternoon basketball Bobby Petrino from the University of Arkansas.
Without further ado, we'll start with the commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, Mike Slive.
COMMISSIONER SLIVE: Thank you, Charles. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 2009 SEC Media Days.
Just as happened last year, you are once again part of the largest group ever to attend this kickoff event. There are nearly one thousand of you in attendance, including media, Bowl representatives, corporate sponsors, and representatives of CBS, ESPN, FOX and Comcast.
In addition, there are 28 radio stations broadcasting live downstairs on radio row. There is no other Media Day like this one in all of college sports.
Given the uncertainty in our world, we very much appreciate the fact that you are here with us today.
Following my annual, and appropriately immodest, brag bag, we will turn our attention to the issues of today, including brief comments about the economic recession, the technological revolution, compliance, secondary violations, and, finally, our historic television agreements.
I continue to be amazed by the accomplishments of our student-athletes year after year. We are witness to one of the conference's most successful competitive periods in its long and distinguished history, a period that someday may be called the SEC's Golden Age.
Part of that Golden Age is 2008 and 2009, which began with another exhilarating football season, culminating in the conference's championship game in Atlanta between the top two teams in the country, followed by Florida beating Oklahoma for the national championship.
The year ended with LSU defeating Texas for the National Baseball Championship.
Between these bookend championships, Auburn won the national championship in men's swimming and diving, Tennessee in women's indoor track and field, and Georgia in gymnastics, for a total of five national championships.
The conference also boasted national championship runners up in men's golf, gymnastics, softball, women's swimming and diving, men's indoor and outdoor track. That means in 11 of the 20 sports that we sponsor, the Southeastern Conference had either the national champion or the national runner-up.
As you all know, this football championship was the conference's third consecutive championship, its fourth in seven years, its fifth in the 11 years of the BCS, and its seventh since the conference expansion in 1992, solidifying, without question, the conference's position as the premiere football conference in America.
But we do more than play football. This year the Southeastern Conference was represented by 150 teams in NCAA championships. That's 75% of the teams that we field, three-quarters of our teams end up in post-season.
In addition, 53 SEC student-athletes won individual national championships, and from one of my very favorite statistics, in the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, 159 current and former SEC student-athletes won 51 medals. Ladies and gentlemen, if the SEC were a nation, we would have finished fourth in the world in medal count.
On the academic front, the SEC led the nation's conferences with 41 academic All-Americans to complement 320 first-team All-Americans. We were also treated to extraordinary individual performances by such outstanding student-athletes as Florida's quarterback Tim Tebow and softball player Stacy Nelson, who were named the academic All-Americans of the year in football and softball respectively, and Georgia gymnast Courtney Kupets was named the Honda-Broderick winner as the collegiate women's athlete of the year.
You often heard us talk about the passion and loyalty of our fans. This year's attendance figures attest to that. For the 28th consecutive season, the SEC recorded the highest total attendance of any conference in the country with 6.7 million of our fans coming to our games, an average of over 75,000 a game, and filling our stadiums to almost 97% of capacity.
Notwithstanding these astounding numbers, the attendance at our conference spring games really may be the best indicator of how much football means to us here in the Southeast. More than 450,000 fans watched our annual spring games for an average attendance of over 37,000, which is an increase of about 6,000 over the previous year.
Another and final measure of success used by some is how the conference football student-athletes fare in the NFL Draft. The SEC plays 259 of its former players on the 2008 NFL opening weekend rosters, leading all conferences. We had the most players drafted in 2009, with 37, and eight in the first round. Since the early '90s, the SEC has had 739 players drafted, the most in the nation, including the 107 first-round selections.
That's the end of the brag bag for the moment.
Beyond the extraordinary achievements of our student-athletes, there are certain realities that we all face. There is no safe harbor from the current economic recession. Every one of us is negatively impacted in some way. The same applies to our institutions and to our fans.
We are fortunate that the conference entered into its new television agreements when we did, just ahead of the full impact of the recession. The additional revenue we will generate will help our institutions maintain their all important broad-based programs for nearly five thousand student-athletes who compete in our league, many of whom are the recipients of grants and aid.
I am extremely proud of the fact that our athletic departments, through the cooperative efforts of our presidents and chancellors and athletic directors, are sharing this added revenue in support of the academic mission of the universities. We are also gratified that our fans, the most loyal and committed in the country, continue to passionately support their institution's teams.
We, as you, cannot predict the length and depth of this recession, nor its ultimate impact on intercollegiate athletics, but we hope, as you all do, as all Americans do, that it ends soon. In the meantime, we remain thankful for the support we continue to enjoy.
As with the recession, there is no safe harbor from the technological revolution. No one knows that better than you. Whether the space is called new media, digital, social networking, cyberspace, the Internet, or the web, it opens doors for some and closes doors for others.
In either case, it's here, and it's a critical component of any organization's communications future. The Southeastern Conference is no exception. With that in mind, throughout our television negotiations, we worked hard to retain the conference's digital rights, a term we use to describe this new space.
As a result, we secured these rights and we are about to launch the SEC Digital Network. We will be in a position to make a formal announcement within the next few weeks.
In addition to a new state-of-the-art website, this network will give us the ability to aggregate, manage, and distribute digital content, including past and future games, highlights, and make them available to our institutions and our fans in real-time. It also provides us with the opportunity to create new and exciting programming in a way that was not possible in the past.
Turning to compliance. The phrase 'renewal of vows' is familiar to those of you who covered us at our spring meetings in Destin. This term relates back to 2004, when the conference, including head football coaches, unanimously voted to adopt recommendations from the task force on compliance and enforcement, a manifesto, setting forth the conference's commitment to compliance, along with a roadmap for coaches to follow in applying these principles.
Today, five years after the report was adopted, we have many new coaches, and this spring it was time for a wake-up call, a time to renew vows by reasserting our commitment to compliance. Each of our coaches and every person associated with our programs, including fans and boosters, must share this commitment to integrity, which is so essential to the continued success of the conference.
We cannot sustain our successes, which is now our ultimate goal, unless we avoid self-inflicted wounds, unless we avoid calling attention to ourselves at the expense of others, and unless we remain committed to the conference, and, finally, unless we realize that we are inexorably tied to each other's athletic and academic successes, and we are tied to each other's athletic and academic failures.
Secondary infractions have been featured prominently in the media of late, but they're not new to the conference, they're not new to our institutions, and they're not new to the NCAA. In fact, secondary violations represent a reality associated with intercollegiate athletics as a highly regulated endeavor, including a 427-page manual of rules and thousands of interpretations.
Included in the manual is a definition of secondary violations which states that a secondary violation is, and I quote, isolated or inadvertent in nature, provides or is intended to provide only a minimal recruiting, competitive, or other advantage, and does not include any significant recruiting inducement or extra benefit.
In the Southeastern Conference, secondary violations are reported to the conference office. We review every report to determine its thoroughness and its accuracy, along with evaluating the appropriate punitive and corrective actions taken by the institution. Following that review, every secondary report is subsequently forwarded to the NCAA for final review and action, if any.
In most circumstances, our member institutions act appropriately to apply penalties and change policies following a secondary violation. However, when either a penalty or a policy is deemed insufficient, the conference has the authority and the will to apply stiffer penalties and to require additional corrective actions.
It's important to understand and to acknowledge that secondary violations occur. But it's also important to understand that they include a very wide range of matters. Recruiting captures the headlines, but, for example, here are some that we get in our office. A student-athlete is provided energy bars that exceeded the protein content limit, a coach has an unofficial visit and takes a student-athlete, a prospect, across the street to have a cup of coffee just off the campus, and that's deemed impermissible off-campus contact. When you see the words 'secondary violations' and you write about them, it makes sense to evaluate each and every one of them on its own merits.
Beyond these relatively minor matters, there are other secondary violations which are more serious, especially in the area of recruiting. In 2004, at the same time the task force was issued, the conference adopted a set of standard penalties that are applied to certain violations of the contact, evaluation and dead period policies of the NCAA. We have standard penalties for phone call, text message, and correspondence violations. These standard penalties are generally more aggressive than would be applied by the NCAA, and were adopted by the conference to communicate that there are, in fact, meaningful penalties applied to secondary violations.
A key aspect of our review of "secondarys" is to determine if there's a pattern beginning to emerge at an institution, within a sport or around a particular individual, be it coach, administrator or prospect. When trends are detected, the penalties and corrective actions become more severe.
To help you understand the treatment of secondary violations by the SEC, the following represent some of the actions taken in response to secondary violations. An entire coaching staff has lost the ability to make recruiting telephone calls for an extended period of time. Coaches have been prevented from participating in all off-campus recruiting activities. Institutions have been prevented from having any recruiting contact with prospects for an extended period of time. And teams have lost practice opportunities.
We understand the perception that we've read about that a coach may make a risk/reward analysis with regard to secondary violations, especially in recruiting. In doing this, a coach would decide to take the risk of committing a violation because of the perceived reward of increased leverage with a prospect makes the risk seem worthwhile.
As we told our coaches earlier this week in our SEC new coaches orientation program, any time - any time - they commit a secondary violation, they place themselves, their program, and the institution and the prospect at risk. The risk may be lost recruiting opportunities, lost ability to interact with prospects, and additional scrutiny for themselves and their program.
Now, turning to a much more positive and upbeat subject, one very close to my heart, is the conference's new television agreements.
We have entered into two historic, long-term agreements with CBS and ESPN. As a result, the SEC will be the most widely distributed conference in the country, utilizing every known distribution platform, including national network, national cable, over-the-air syndication, regional cable, Internet, broadband, and mobile TV phones, all of which will be supplemented by the SEC Digital Network and our local institutional packages.
ESPN will carry more than 5500 events over the 15 years. That's an average of 365 events a year.
For those of you who were here last year, you might remember that I outlined the criteria we used in making a decision about whether to launch our own channel or to grant television rights to one or more television entities. In considering the options, our goals were as follows: to provide expanded national exposure for football, men's and women's basketball, and our Olympic sports, to further enhance the reputation and brand of the Southeastern Conference throughout the country and throughout the world, to provide the opportunity for our institutions to promote their academic initiatives, to retain digital rights for the benefit of our institutions, and to provide long-term financial stability for our institutions in support of their broad-based athletic programs.
In our agreements with CBS and ESPN, we have been able to achieve these goals without the challenges associated with the development of a channel.
In addition to televising athletics, athletic events, athletic shows, our agreement with ESPN includes a five-point academic program highlighted by the online SEC Academic Network, which utilizes ESPN 360.com technology. We will launch the SEC Academic Network in mid August. This network will provide our 12 institutions with the ability to create and distribute academic and other non-athletic programming throughout the world on a regular and full-time basis.
Turning our attention to football, I think you all know this by now, but all the games in which the conference owns the rights will be televised on CBS, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN Classic on an expanded over-the-air syndication package and on cable by FOX and Comcast. CBS will continue to be the conference's exclusive network broadcast provider and televise games in the window as you have become accustom over the last several years.
ESPN, as our conference's exclusive national cable provider, and over-the-air syndicator, will televise all the other games on the platforms I've outlined. Through agreements with ESPN, FOX, and Comcast will be the SEC's regional cable providers.
We're going to do something a little differently than we've done in the past. We have invited John Wildhack, ESPN's executive vice president for programming acquisition and strategy, Burke Magnus, ESPN senior vice president, college sports programming, and Chris Turner, ESPN's senior director, SEC programming, to join us up here at the podium, to talk about the agreement from ESPN's perspective. When we finish, John, Burke and Chris will be available throughout the day to answer your questions.
John.
JOHN WILDHACK: Thank you, commissioner. Good afternoon to all of you.
Since we announced this unprecedented agreement last August, our staffs have worked in tandem to prepare for the launch of this new agreement with a keen eye on this upcoming football season. I'd like to thank Mike Slive and his terrific staff for their great work and acknowledge some of my colleagues here today: Burke Magnus, our senior vice president collegiate sports programming, Chris Turner, director of SEC programming, and in the back, Pete Derzis, the senior vice president and general manager of ESPN regional television.
Our arrangement with the SEC is the most unique in college sports. While all components of this agreement are critical to the SEC and ESPN, we are delighted to launch our new offering with the 2009 SEC football season.
While ESPN's headquarters is in Connecticut, all of us are fully aware and appreciate the passion, popularity and excellence that defines SEC football. It is unequaled in college sports and spreads far beyond the 300,000 plus SEC students on campus to millions of alumni around the country and the world.
At the core of our agreement is the fact that every SEC controlled football game will be available to SEC fans throughout the conference territory and, indeed, the country via an ESPN platform or through our partners, FOX Sports Net, and CSS.
Our goal is to serve the SEC football fan better than ever before. According to AC Nielsen Company last year, 77 million people watched SEC football on ESPN or ESPN2. We expect that number to increase significantly this season. How will we do it? By featuring SEC games on all ESPN networks and platforms, increasing the coverage area of the weekly over-the-air syndication game, partnering with established regional sports networks, FOX Sports Net and CSS, and utilizing industry-leading technology such as broadband and wireless platforms so that the SEC fan can watch the game of their choice wherever they may be.
The SEC will continue to be the anchor conference of our Saturday prime time packages on ESPN and ESPN2. A minimum of 20 games will be televised, which is an increase over prior years. All games will be produced in high-definition.
Both ESPN and ESPN2 are fully distributed networks, and are closing in on distribution of a hundred million homes. In addition to Saturday night games, the SEC will make occasional appearances on our very successful Thursday night prime time series as well. Besides an increase in games on ESPN and ESPN2, to signify the unique relationship we have with the SEC, we have produced a joint SEC-ESPN logo. It will be the prominent on-air branding for all SEC games on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU. You can see that on the monitor.
We appreciate the tradition and importance of the early Saturday afternoon SEC Game of the Week. The fine people at Raycomm should be commended for their past work on this package. We are delighted to assume responsibility for the production and the distribution of this important programming. The branding for the over-the-air syndication game will be the SEC Network.
In addition to clearing the games at every television market within the SEC footprint, we will broaden the distribution of this package. The SEC Network will be cleared on several major markets outside the SEC territory, including Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Chicago, Detroit, Columbus, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and New York. In total, the SEC Network will reach 60 million U.S. television households in 73 markets, just over half the television households in the United States.
The SEC Network game of the week debuts on Saturday, September 5th, and will be produced in high-definition. Dave Neal, who has tremendous knowledge of the SEC, will do play-by-play. Our game analyst will be Heisman Trophy winner Andre Ware. They will be joined by sideline reporter Cara Capuano.
New to this package is a fully integrated studio show. It will begin at 12 noon Eastern, with kickoff at 12:21 Eastern time. Rob Stone will serve as the host of the studio show, and Matt Stinchcomb, an All-American on the playing field, and in the classroom at Georgia will provide analysis and commentary.
New for SEC fans will be a game of the week, primarily in prime time on ESPNU. Recently we announced distribution agreements with Comcast and DIRECTV, which will result in ESPNU's household base growing from 26 million homes to 45 million homes by September 1st of this year.
ESPNU is a 24-by-7 network devoted to college sports and has distribution agreements with nine of the top 10 distributors, including Time Warner, DISH Network, Cox, Charter, Verizon, AT&T, and Media-Com, as well as the previously mentioned Comcast and DIRECTV.
The addition of a weekly SEC game on ESPNU is a milestone for the network and offers SEC fans a new outlet to enjoy SEC football.
Eric Collins will be our play-by-play person and Brock Hewitt will provide analysis for the ESPNU games. And the SEC will be the first conference to have all their games on ESPNU televised in high-definition.
Outside in the atrium, we have a monitor tuned to ESPNU and invite you to stop by. Incidentally, we will devote a significant amount of our programming on ESPNU over the next three days to the events here in Birmingham.
SEC games on ESPNU is not the only new outlet that SEC fans will be able to see their favorite schools compete this year. We recently announced wide ranging deals with FOX Sports Net and Comcast Charter Sports Southeast. FOX Sports Net has been a long time and valued partner to the SEC, and we are pleased that for the first time their SEC content offering will include live SEC football games.
CSS has also televised a significant amount of SEC programing and they, too, for the first time will be televising live SEC football.
In 2009 season, FOX Sports Net will televise seven SEC games and CSS will televise six. In addition to distributing these game within SEC states, both FOX Sports Net and CSS will have the option to distribute these games on the regional networks outside the SEC states.
To give a sense of how this all adds up for the SEC fan, let me review the schedule for the opening weekend. On Saturday, September 5th, the 12 p.m. SEC Network Game of the Week will be Western Kentucky at Tennessee. ESPNU will do a game at 12 noon, Miami of Ohio, Kentucky. 3:30 p.m., ESPNU, Jackson State and Mississippi State. At 7, ESPNU will have Louisiana Tech at Auburn.
FSN at 7 p.m. will have Charleston Southern at Florida and CSS will have Western Carolina at Vanderbilt at 7 p.m. Also Missouri State and Arkansas will be available by Pay-Per-View retained by Arkansas, as consistent with past practices, all schools will retain one game as a Pay-Per-View opportunity. That's just Saturday, September 5th. That's just games that are played at SEC institutions.
In addition, other SEC schools will be featured on our networks in road or neutral site games. On Thursday, September 3rd, we launch our Thursday night prime time series with South Carolina at North Carolina State on ESPN. September 5th at 3:30 p.m., Georgia at Oklahoma State will be on ESPN on ABC, and 8 p.m. Alabama and Virginia Tech will be on ESPN on ABC from Atlanta. 10:30, LSU at Washington will be on ESPN. There's one more game. September 6th, Ole Miss at Memphis on ESPN at 3:30 p.m.
You can see the new impact of our new relationship as ESPNU's three games, both FOX Sports Net and CSS have a game as well. All 12 SEC schools play opening weekend. The result, all 12 games are televised, no games go untelevised.
Over all the season, it appears that 23 more games will be televised via traditional platforms than in 2008.
For those SEC fans who may not be subscribers to FOX Sports Net or CSS, those games will also be available on ESPN GamePlan. Fans can access ESPN GamePlan via their cable or satellite provider, Verizon FiOS service, and AT&T's video service, or they can access on ESPN360.com, our broadband network.
ESPN360.com is very simple, high quality television on your computer. Along with ESPNU, ESPN360.com is experiencing significant growth. By September 1st of this year, ESPN360.com will be available in 41 million homes, which is approximately 60% of the U.S. broadband universe.
In addition to the 41 million homes ESPN360.com will be available to anyone with a ".EDU" address, and to the men and women of our armed forces around the world.
In addition to carrying the FOX Sports Net and CSS games, ESPN360.com will also simulcast all SEC games shown on ESPN, ESPN2, and the SEC Network.
I mentioned we would use industry leading technology to serve fans, ESPN360.com is a perfect example of that. Outside in the atrium, we have a display of ESPN360.com. One of our colleagues is stationed there and can answer any questions you may have about the service.
Another example of using emerging technology is the fact that SEC games will be carried on our wireless network, ESPN mobile TV, which is distributed by Verizon, AT&T and Alltel. More than 800 live events will be featured on ESPN mobile TV this year. The distribution of SEC football is just not limited, though, to the United States. SEC games will be seen internationally on ESPN networks in England, the Middle East, Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, and Australia.
At ESPN, we use a phrase 'best screen available.' Most often than not, the first choice for a fan is to watch their game on their HD set. However, when that's not possible, the passionate fan will watch the game of interest on their hand-held device or on their computer. We want to provide SEC fans with as many options as possible to watch the game of their choice.
This agreement uses technology beyond the boundaries of the playing field as well. Mike alluded to this in his opening comments. The SEC is at the cutting edge of technology and we are proud to have partnered with the conference and all 12 institutions to help launch the SEC Academic Network. This network will use the technology of ESPN360.com and allow each institution to populate their homesite on the network with an unlimited variety of academic offerings. After logging on, the user will be able to access content from any of the institutions by simply clicking on that institution's site on the front page.
It's important for me to reiterate how excited we are about the launch of this new arrangement and the potential that it holds for ESPN, for the SEC, and for fans of the SEC. Oftentimes today things are overstated and overhyped. We at ESPN believe, I think the commissioner would acknowledge as well, that this relationship is truly unprecedented. At its core is our collective and common goal to serve SEC fans to the best of our ability.
Now, no ESPN presentation would be complete without some video. To help reinforce my message today, here is the host of college game day, Chris Fowler.

JOHN WILDHACK: Besides the key featuring ESPN360.com, we have press kits available to go into further detail about the distribution of SEC football. Also to help any answer any of your questions, besides Chris Burke and myself, we have colleagues from Mike Humes and Jenny Zimmerman from our communications department with us today. We also have a number of announcers here with us. If you would like to talk to any of them, please feel free to seek them out.
Thank you for your time today. We look forward to providing the best football conference in the country with the greatest distribution any conference has ever received.
Commissioner, back to you.
COMMISSIONER SLIVE: Thank you, John.
Again, John and Burke and Chris will be here throughout the day and be very happy to have one-on-ones with you, answer any questions you may have.
Also, Craig Silver, the executive producer of SEC football on CBS is here, and there is a kiosk out there if you want to talk with Craig at all.
So, ladies and gentlemen, that does it for this segment. Thank you very much. As we say every year, when you begin to write, may the muse be with you. Talk to you later.

End of FastScripts

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