The SEC Media Days are outgrowing Birmingham

Last week the SEC Media Days took over the mainstream sports media world. Over 1,500 media personnel, all 14 coaches and their three players took to the podiums and microphones for four days in Hoover, Alabama. The suburb of Birmingham has served as the host of media days since 1985 when there were only 10 teams and maybe 100 reporters without any television coverage. Back then, the coaches sat and drank with reporters at roundtables and they didn’t bring players. Nowadays, Media Days serve as the giant hype machine for the upcoming season that the SEC and ESPN have manufactured into it’s mid-July money making spectacle. The scary thing is, SEC Media days have a 38 inch waistline wearing 42 waistline pants - they still have a considerable amount of room to grow.

Since the SEC is headquartered in Birmingham, it makes sense to run Media Days in Hoover. The beauty of the event is that it takes place during the one week of the year when the sports world is the most boring, and it brings together the most interesting conference with the most interesting coaches and storylines. It’s not scheduled by accident, it’s a calculated decision. It is feeding off of the slow sports news feed efficiently, but it can start doing so more effectively with a couple of changes. For starters, instead of covering three or teams a day over four days, they should move to two teams a day over seven days. Seven days of Paul Finebaum poking the bears that are SEC head coaches on live television? I’d watch it.

Birmingham has been the home of the media days since the inception of the event, but with it’s biggest media day yet - the SEC needs to look for greener pastures. SEC Com

missioner Greg Sankey has already leaked that big changes are ahead for next year’s media days, and he also mentioned giving the Hoover baseball complex an ultimatum to improve their facilities or a move will be made - so the question should be asked… when, not if, are SEC Media Days going to move to Atlanta?

The SEC Championship is already at the Georgia Dome and it’s about to move next door to one of the most innovative and iconic stadiums. While the Hyatt-Winfrey in Hoover has done a fabulous job hosting the event, could you imagine SEC Media Days from the Georgia World Congress Center, where the Olympic media village was hosted back in 1996. Or SEC Media Days from the College Football Hall of Fame. For a conference whose new motto is “It just matters more,” there’s no better way to stamp that statement in cement than to take over the building that represents the entire sport for an entire week. Or better yet - you could even set up media days inside the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium on the field much like Super Bowl Media Days are set up. Personally, I would love to hear soundbites of coaches from their podium trying to convince the media and fans that their team is going to play right where they’re standing at the beginning of December. With the right facility to host media days, you could even open it up for fans to attend. Never in the history of Southeastern Conference football have fans shied away from repping their school colors publicly, and media days have the potential to turn into a seven day ESPN College Gameday scene.