DALLAS — “The SEC will light up the Dallas skyline with the colors of the Southeastern Conference.”
That was the bold proclamation of SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey this time last year when he announced during SEC Football Media Days in Nashville, Tennessee, that the preseason talkfest in 2024 was going to be held in Dallas.
Twelve months later, the SEC will unleash its dog-and-pony show here at The Omni Hotel Downtown Dallas on Monday morning. Media Days will begin as they do every year, with Sankey’s state-of-the-SEC remarks. Somewhere therein, Sankey will announce where next year’s SEC Media Days will be.
That could be Atlanta or possibly back to Birmingham, Alabama, or to Nashville. It’s hard to tell these days because, like everything else in the conference where “It Just Means More,” well, Media Days just mean more these days.
Last year, Nashville hosted for the first time. In true Music City style, it tried to make a big deal of this affair. Alas, the highly anticipated country music concert planned for a stage in the middle of Broadway was washed out by storms, and construction surrounding the hosting hotel basically choked out much in the way of fan participation.
Enter Dallas, which was the chosen venue this year for good reason. With Oklahoma and Texas receiving their official welcomes into the SEC fold July 1, it seemed appropriate for the league to bring its show west to greet its new members on their home turf. The Sooners and Longhorns meet annually just down the road in Fair Park in their famous Red River Rivalry at the Cotton Bowl.
The additions of the two former Big 12 schools bring to 16 the number of teams now competing in the SEC. That meant the elimination of divisions, though the conference championship game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium will continue. Along with the expansion of the College Football Playoff to 12 teams and other issues currently facing college athletics, the respective head coaches and a total of 48 player representatives will have much to discuss with the 1,000 or so credentialed media members.
Exciting times, for sure, but SEC Media Days likely won’t be the brightest light in Dallas this week. There’s another little shindig in town and it will have been well under way by the time Sankey steps onto the podium Monday morning.
The “Midsummer Classic” – also known as the MLB All-Star game – is dominating the local landscape at the moment. Staged 17 miles west down I-30 at Globe Life Field in Arlington, activities surrounding that grand event got under way Friday night with the HBCU Swingman Classic game. Saturday featured the Futures Game, a Skills Showcase and a Celebrity Softball Game. On Sunday, the Fort Worth Stockyards will serve as ground zero for the beginning of the MLB draft. All that comes before Monday’s Home Run Derby and Tuesday’s All-Star game.
But the SEC doesn’t mind being a bit of a sideshow, just this once. The conference’s close Cotton Bowl allies have served as liaisons in the job of planning 2024 Media Days, and they kind of like the idea paddling alongside big-league baseball.
“It doesn’t hurt,” said Michael Konradi, the Cotton Bowl’s chief marketing officer. “You’ve got the Home Run Derby on Monday and the All-Star game on Tuesday. We’re actually having an event on Tuesday night called ‘Bowl Games’ where people not going to the All-Star game will have a great place to come watch it.”
“Bowl Games” is a new-fangled type of bowling alley where the patrons compete in “fowling” (pronounced FOE-ling). It’s a game where pins are knocked down by throwing footballs. Cute, huh?
Also planned are “SEC Kickoff at the Movies” Monday night at the Texas Theater that Lee Harvey Oswald made infamous and a media reception Wednesday night at Globe Life Field. There are no outdoor entertainment plans in the historic downtown district. The forecast calls for highs of 98 degrees the first two days of the week and 100 by Wednesday.
“The SEC has I think done a phenomenal job of looking at unique ways to raise the profile of Media Days, between going to Atlanta and the College Football Hall of Fame and last year in Nashville with things planned on Broadway Street and things like that,” Konradi said. “To come west this year, obviously with Texas and Oklahoma joining the conference, A&M and Arkansas already being in the conference, to have more of a western presence makes a lot of sense. So, when the SEC knocked on our door and said, ‘this is something we’re contemplating, what would you recommend?’ from a hospitality perspective we were eager to jump at the chance to help them.”
While the SEC might not have the full attention of the city of Dallas this week, the inside of the Omni Hotel will be focused fully on football. Questions about revenue-sharing, roster sizes, continued conference realignment, expanded playoffs and issues associated with unchecked NIL compensation and unlimited transfers undoubtedly will persist, as they have the entire offseason.
But with only six weeks remaining before the first games of the season – and fewer than three weeks to go before preseason camps open – a shift of perspective to what might be expected to happen on the field this fall will be a welcomed change.
Judging only from odds being posted by Las Vegas handicappers, the Georgia Bulldogs are poised again to be the designated SEC favorite going into the season. With an average money line of $305 this year, this is the third Media Days in a row in which the Bulldogs are the consensus pick again among the largest betting houses. They won it all in 2021 and ‘22, but missed the playoff as a one-loss team this past year.
“Nothing really changes with the Bulldogs being the class of the SEC and all of college football,” said Joey Feazel, Caesars Sports’ head of football trading.
Texas, Alabama, Ole Miss and LSU, respectively, get the next-best SEC odds from bookmakers. Notably, Georgia plays the first three of those teams on the road this season.
The resident “hot-seat” talk that always occupies Media Days surely will be prominent. Preliminary chatter has the names of Arkansas’ Sam Pittman, Florida’s Billy Napier, South Carolina’s Shane Beamer and Vanderbilt’s Clark Lea leading that discussion.
Three new head coaches will receive their SEC Media Day indoctrination in Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer, Mississippi State’s Jeff Lebby and Texas A&M’s Mike Elko.
Fan participation is the great unknown surrounding this year’s event. In the Birmingham suburb of Hoover and certainly at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta, autograph- and photo-seekers hunting their favorite players and coaches tend to crowd the lobbies, entrances and stairwells during SEC Media Days. Nobody’s sure how North Texans will react to such a gathering of football titans in their midst in the middle of July.
“Hoover is something else to see, those fan bases that set up in the lobby to get a glimpse of their guys,” Konradi said. “Certainly, the majority of them are Alabama or Auburn fans, but a good smattering of Georgia and all the other schools as well. I know the SEC has received calls from fans inquiring about opportunities. We’ll see.”
It follows that most, if any, will be dressed in burnt orange or crimson and cream. Those are new colors for this old league. Those additions are expected to bring with them a lot of green, which remains the SEC’s favorite color.
