SEC Media Days: What To Expect From Day 1
It’s Day 1 of the SEC Media Days in Hoover, Alabama, and with Florida, South Carolina, Ole Miss and Missouri talking, it should be a bright start – especially with Steve Spurrier doing some mouthing.
So we expect these coaches to be talking about these things:
From Steve Spurrier (South Carolina): He’ll point out that South Carolina beat Georgia last year, but didn’t go to the SEC Championship Game. He’ll blame the tough 2012 schedule – but he’s not going to mention the 2013 one, where the Gamecocks don’t play Alabama, LSU or Texas A&M (we can only dream of Jadeveon Clowney vs Johnny Manziel). He’ll also point out that players need to get paid to play college football (his usual rant), and he’ll make stir some crap about Clemson. He’ll also point out that South Carolina’s QB quandry with Connor Shaw and Dylan Thompson isn’t a bad thing to have, as options go. Oh, and he’ll be asked how he felt when Clowney knocked the head off that Michigan guy. He’ll probably answer: “Pretty good”. He won’t answer: “I laughed”.
From Will Muschamp (Florida): Some idiot’s going to ask him how the arrest of Aaron Hernandez and subsequent focus on Urban Meyer (who recruited Hernandez) has hit the Florida team (Certainly it hasn’t given Gainseville good PR – that’s for certain!). He’ll talk about the importance of improving UF’s passing game, as well as the players ‘missing’ from the 2012 team – and try and lower heady expectations. He’ll also talk about the Boston Red Sox and Jeff Driskel, and maybe make a nasty point about Johnny Manziel and Texas A&M, just to annoy the Aggies fans. As usual.
From Hugh Freeze (Ole Miss): He’ll talk about the incredible recruiting that Ole Miss did in 2014, and say something like: “It won’t mean anything if the players don’t bed in this or next season”. Someone will ask him about how he felt watching the Super Bowl and the Big Guy From The Blind Side (Michael Oher), and the sense of pride. He’ll make some comment about The Lord, and he’ll address the sadness of losing Park Stevens, who died in a car wreck only a few weeks ago. He WON’T talk crap about Dan Mullen and Mississippi State, but he may well make a nice comment about Tyler Russell, who’s one of the better QBs in the SEC.
From Gary Pinkel (Missouri): He’ll be asked about the pressure of the SEC, the hot seat, the worry, the pain, the bad 2012 record, the underperformance of wide receiver Dorial Green-Beckham, the poor QBing, the poor defence, oh, and the pressure. He won’t tell you that he’d rather that his Mizzou team was in a much more palatable Big XII (although last year, it was fiercely competitive, and Missouri would have been middling there, too (but they would have comfortably won the Border War). He’ll be asked about how he sees things in 2013, and what a measure of success will be.