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SEC Football

Most memorable quotes from SEC Media Days 2015

Kevin Duffey

By Kevin Duffey

Published:

The 2015 SEC Media Days have come and gone, and now, college football preseason starts to really get revved up.

Fall camp opens the first of August, and football is right around the corner.

Although Steve Spurrier stole the show Tuesday, several other coaches delivered memorable quotes from this past week in Hoover, Alabama, and we compiled all the best quotes of the week.

Steve Spurrier, South Carolina

Throwing shade at Arkansas and Tennessee: “We were 7-6, same as Tennessee and the same as Arkansas, and I think they’re sort of celebrating big seasons last year. So we were celebrating also. We were doing some cartwheels and high fiving after that Independence Bowl game because it was a year that could have gone real south, and guys hung in there and somehow or another found a way to win the game.”

On retirement: “Somebody said, ‘Why are you still coaching?’ I said, ‘Well, I forgot to get fired, and I’m not going to cheat.’ That’s about the only way you lose your job: you get fired for losing or you cheat and then they get somebody else. I’ve not done any of those to any extent big-time, I guess.”

More on retirement: “That retirement thing, I don’t think I’d be very good at it. I can go to the beach, stay four or five days and then, ‘Hey, let’s get on out of here. We’ve been here long enough.’”

Bret Bielema, Arkansas

On kneeling on the 2-yard line vs. Texas: “It was a proud moment. Borderline erotic.”

Responding to Steve Spurrier’s jab: “I will say this. I’ll respect my elders at all points. I don’t think that body is built, no matter how big the shoes, with rockets or not, I could do any cartwheels.”

On his offensive linemen being on the cover of the media guide: “This group was an extremely handsome group that I thought deserved the headline.”

Les Miles, LSU

On Leonard Fournette’s red pants: “It was a mistake. If I could spray paint them, I would.”

On Dan Mullen’s and Bret Bielema’s shoe game: “I’m wearing regular shoes and regular socks.”

Gus Malzahn, Auburn

On Michigan, Jim Harbaugh and satellite camps: “The chances of a team up north coming into our state and a player that us or Alabama wants are slim to none. So it was just a matter of that was the big story. Our league right now, if they’re going to keep doing it, we’ve chosen to be a part of that. So we’ll see where that goes.”

On hiring Will Muschamp: “Defensively in the off-season, we hired Will Muschamp, in my opinion, the best defensive mind in all of football, not just college football.”

On Jeremy Johnson: “I really appreciate the way that he responded to not being the starter the last couple of years, when he could have started for the majority of the teams, and the way he’s really responded is really something special.”

Jim McElwain, Florida

On Steve Spurrier’s legacy: “I drive by work every day and pass his statue. That’s pretty cool. There’s a Heisman Trophy winner right there. I look forward to someday being really able to sit down and pick his brain because he’s one of the true guys offensively that knows how to get it done.”

Derek Mason, Vanderbilt

On his first year: “I made some assumptions a year ago about this football team. I assumed that, just because we were in the SEC, that we’d play like an SEC team, and we didn’t. Again, that starts with me. So I bring it back to me.”

Kevin Sumlin, Texas A&M

On hiring John Chavis away from LSU: “I didn’t kind of. That’s exactly what I did. There’s really nothing more to the answer than that. That’s true.”

Dan Mullen, Mississippi State

On wearing the Kanye West’s signature sneaker, the Adidas Yeezy 350 Boost: “I try to be swagged up in footwear. I’ve got a little sock game going today too. You know what, I was talking to the guys at Adidas like, hey, this is the hottest shoe. I’m like, well, I’d like to wear kind of cool shoes, I think, when I go somewhere. I don’t go too overboard with the suits sometimes, little more conservative that way, but with the sock game and the shoe wear, I try to have some swag on any time I do that stuff.”

On low media expectations for his team in 2015: “This is my seventh year coming here, and I think all seven years they’ve pretty much picked us to finish last in the West. It’s kind of like a tradition, I guess. We don’t really worry much about that. I’m much more concerned with how we finish.”

Butch Jones, Tennessee

On Joshua Dobbs’ intelligence: ”He’s right up there from an intelligence standpoint. On the way over here, I thought he was going to try to fly the plane.”

Responding to Steve Spurrier’s jab: “Now, I want to make one thing clear. Contrary to reports, there were no back flips, and there were no somersaults, but I think in the world of college football, you’re judged by wins and losses, but also you’re judged by does your team overachieve or under achieve. And I thought last year’s football team, team 118 overachieved. And being the youngest team in all of college football, not having any returning offensive linemen and defensive linemen, I’m really, really proud of our players.”

Nick Saban, Alabama

On the timing of the NFL’s pre-draft evaluation feedback to college players: “I just felt like, in our experience last year, our team chemistry from the SEC Championship game to the playoff game was affected by something.”

Gary Pinkel, Missouri

On low recruiting rankings: “We don’t look at stars, never have, in our evaluation. It’s never come up in our system that we use. Our system is designed to check out people for the kind of people that they are, try to get very competitive people, try to bring students in your program that want to excel. And they have to have size and speed, especially speed, potential. They don’t really have to be great football players.”

On the lac of respect in the SEC: “I think it probably bothers my players a little bit more than me. I don’t really talk about that. I don’t really go there. I’ll tell you how you get respect is graduating your players, developing our students into young men, and winning football games. That’s how you get respect.”

Mark Richt, Georgia

On the criticism he takes every year: ”I didn’t know I got criticism. [ Laughter ]. I think the big thing — I know when I first started coaching 32 years ago, whenever it was, with Coach Bowden and being in what we call hideaway and him talking about notes. A few things he talked about in the very beginning of those sessions, and one was criticism. He said, it’s just the nature of the beast in the profession. If you can’t take criticism, then you shouldn’t coach.”

Kevin Duffey

A graduate of the University of Florida and founder of Saturday Down South, Kevin is a college football enthusiast.

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