SEC Media Days: Mike Slive brags on SEC, urges change at NCAA

SEC Commissioner Mike Slive began SEC Media Days 2013 by bragging about the success of his conference, promising a review of the SEC football schedule and discussed reform of the NCAA and its regulatory approach to college athletics.

“The current regulatory approach would be more at home in the era of Johann Gutenberg’s printing press than in our current fast-paced technology-driven society and will no longer serve to functionally govern recruiting behaviors moving forward,” Slive said at SEC Media Days 2013.

Slive pointed toward the revolution in communication technology as an example of why the NCAA’s approach requires reform in an era of Facebook, Twitter and more.

“Intercollegiate athletics requires remarkable and innovative leadership to slash through our Gordian knot. Our challenges are complex, they always have been, and they always will be,” Slive said at SEC Media Days 2013.” With that said, we have supported and continue to support the NCAA as the appropriate governing organization for intercollegiate athletics. But at the same time, however, we will continue to push for changes we believe are in the best interest of our student-athletes.”

SEC Media Days

Slive praises the SEC for its success

“In the sport of football, the SEC won its seventh straight BCS national championship, finished the regular season with six teams ranked in the top 10, the first conference to accomplish such a feat in the history of college football, set a record with 63 NFL Draft picks, more than double that of any other conference, and an SEC football player was awarded the Heisman Trophy for the fourth time in the last six years,” Slive said at SEC Media Days.

Alabama owns three of those football national championships including the last two and more than its share of those NFL draft picks.

Alabama and the SEC’s honors don’t end on the football field. Slive made sure to praise the academic efforts of the SEC.

“At the same time many of our football student-athletes excelled academically. Alabama Barrett Jones was awarded the national football foundations William V. Campbell Trophy, better known to you as the Academic Heisman,” SLive said at SEC Media Days 2013. “Three of the last four academic All-Americans of the last year came from the SEC, namely Barrett Jones in 2012, Alabama’s Greg McElroy in 2010, and Florida’s Tim Tebow in 2009.”

Slive examined the issue of the SEC football schedule. Slive said a review of the SEC football schedule for the 2016 season will examine “whether or not to play an eight- or nine-game conference schedule and whether or not to retain permanent non-divisional opponents.”