Way back in the day, the annual SEC Media Days felt like a decidedly quaint affair compared to what it is now. Anchored in a hotel which was anchored to a huge mall in Hoover, SEC Media Days always served as the unofficial start to that year’s college football season.
Aside from trying to break my personal record of Dr Peppers consumed in a single day, it always felt like there was going to be some news broken at SECMD back then – a strong buffet spread of informational goodness the assembled ink-stained wretches didn’t already know about and thus couldn’t wait to deliver to the eager fanbase back home.
Flash forward over 20 years from those gauzy memories, and SEC Media Days are still very much the unofficial start of the season for the 16 programs that make up the conference. Hoover has given way to various ports of call since then, the SEC Network now goes wall-to-wall with live coverage, and I didn’t witness a single scribe chugging a Dr Pepper in the background all week.
And all the news? Well, that’s a concept now more resigned to the history books. Because we didn’t learn a whole lot from this week’s glorious excess of 2026 SEC Media Days that we didn’t already know.
News happens differently these days, which is a whole separate rant. And it doesn’t help that the current 16 coaches and their player representatives on hand this week in Tampa are so media trained that you couldn’t wedge more a morsel of true wisdom out of Kirby Smart or more than a blink-if-you-missed-it controversial sentence from Lane Kiffin if you tried.
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Not that a couple coaches didn’t attempt to at least make their private-jet jaunt to Tampa worth their while. New Kentucky coach Will Stein, bless his heart, bribed the SEC Network crew with his momma’s homemade cakes while simultaneously declaring that the Wildcats will win big “because of him”.
Florida’s Jon Sumrall, who apparently graduated from the Mike Krzyzewski School of Being Wound Tight, almost chucked the main podium at some poor writer who had the audacity to have his cellphone on ring mode instead of silent.
But other than that? Mostly pablum.
SDS’s own Ethan Stone produced a handy piece on the tidbits of news that did come out of SEC Media Days this week, and it is worth reading. But the real utility of the SEC’s footballpalooza is the signal that Talking Season is almost behind us and actual football is right around the corner.
These summers keep getting longer and longer without our sport, y’all, even though the College Football Playoff keeps pushing the end of seasons back and Week 0 seeming to beget Week minus-1 more and more. Even with the world futbol stage stretching from sea to shining sea this summer, counting down the days to when we can hang on every Ryan Silverfield word and keep track of the amount of eye-rolls Paul Finebaum uncorks live on set once again has sparked that pilot light in our collective souls.
Because, really, that’s what these shindigs are for now – the starting pistol at a marathon more than a news-gathering opportunity. SEC Media Days, just like the ACC’s version last week and the Big Ten’s next week, are equal to the first tray of appetizers materializing alongside a just-opened open bar. You have been so hungry and thirsty for anything football, you don’t even notice that you’re throwing down Ritz crackers with chopped liver and chasing it with a lukewarm PBR.
These preseason jib-jab sessions are also wholly unique to college football. You don’t see the NFC East gathering the Commanders, Cowboys, Eagles and Giants in a hotel ballroom outside Trenton to dissect their respective two-deeps, do ya? Baseball does precisely zero preseason talking – instead meandering idyllically through spring training in Florida and Arizona. The NBA has the Summer League and about 48 hours of preseason, but Adam Silver wouldn’t dream of ferrying LeBron James to Omaha to help preview the 76ers’ season ahead.
Yet the tradition that is preseason media days perseveres and has evolved to remain curiously current within our 500-channel and zillion-website world. Much like “Back Home Again In Indiana” is sung every year before the Indy 500 and aging major champs still get trotted out for the ceremonial opening tee shot at The Masters, we just can’t quit SEC Media Days.
Did we really learn much this year? Of course not. Did that make it any less glorious? Of course not.
Now let’s play some football!
An APSE national award-winning writer and editor, David Wasson has almost four decades of experience in the print journalism business in Florida and Alabama. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and several national magazines and websites. His Twitter handle: @JustDWasson.
