14 players to be featured on 'Beyond the Field: Stories of the SEC'
SEC Media Days is already a media manifesto celebrating college football’s best conference, and it’s about to get even better.
The SEC announced it will feature compelling off-the-field stories of 14 players — one from every team — in a new series “Beyond The Field: Stories of the SEC”.
“The athletic achievements of the SEC continue to be well-documented, but many of our student-athletes lead interesting lives or have intriguing stories that happen away from the field of play,” said Greg Sankey, the new commissioner of the SEC who will preside over his first conference media event July 13-16 at the Hyatt Regency Birmingham-The Wynfrey Hotel in Hoover, Alabama. “This is an opportunity to tell stories of academic achievement, personal ambition, community service, determination in the face of adversity and character of mind. These student-athletes are the chapters of a larger book that is the story of the Southeastern Conference.”
Here are the 14 players the initiative will feature:
- Reggie Ragland, LB, Alabama
- Jonathan Williams, RB, Arkansas
- Jeremy Johnson, QB, Auburn
- Jonathan Bullard, DE, Florida
- Malcolm Mitchell, WR, Georgia
- Melvin Lewis, DT, Kentucky
- Leonard Fournette, RB, LSU
- Evan Engram, TE, Ole Miss
- Dak Prescott, QB, Mississippi State
- Kenya Dennis, CB, Missouri
- Elliot Fry, PK, South Carolina
- Joshua Dobbs, QB, Tennessee
- Mike Matthews, C, Texas A&M
- Ralph Webb, RB, Vanderbilt
In my opinion, the SEC needs more of this. Fans want to get to know their players better, and this is a nice step in that direction. While I liked the SEC Network last season, there’s so much more upside the network has by focusing more on the players, their backgrounds and their paths to their respective universities.
You can read more about the initiative from the SEC here.