🏈 Welcome to the circus that is Media Days

[BAMANEWSBOT]

or one week every July, the Hyatt Regency Wynfrey Hotel in Hoover transforms into a jungle, where Bulldogs, Gators, Razorbacks and Tigers of all different stripes converge to mingle with more than 1,000 media members.

The annual three-ring circus known as SEC Media Days, featuring representatives from all 14 Southeastern Conference programs, kicks off today.

Considered the unofficial start of the SEC football season, the four-day spectacle always brings with it multiple topics of conversation, including compelling storylines and the occasional head-scratching answers from players and coaches.

This year’s edition isn’t expected to disappoint, not with an array of interesting storylines already on tap, as well as the official introduction of new SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, who takes over after the retirement of Mike Slive earlier this summer.

And there are always the welcomed (or unwelcomed, depending on your perspective) surprises, such as LSU head coach Les Miles’ annual tangent about his most recent vacation or South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier’s biting jabs at other coaches’ expense or what topic Alabama’s Nick Saban will espouse from his Media Days pulpit this year.

Which of the 42 player representatives will inevitably say something that raises eyebrows and makes the rounds this week? What completely new issue will become the most-talked about topic of the week?

The most important question is: Will any of it matter when the season kicks off in September?

Some of the likely topics during this week’s SEC Media Days:

Sankey’s battle plan
A longtime confidant of Slive, the SEC’s new commissioner had a hand in nearly everything the conference accomplished in the past several years, from the creation of the SEC Network to spearheading the move for autonomy. But what will the first year of Sankey’s tenure look like?

During his first address as SEC commissioner, Sankey is expected to lay out his agenda of what he’d like to see accomplished within the SEC. With a lot of big-ticket issues such as full cost of attendance and a growing number of off-the-field incidents putting a spotlight on player discipline, it’ll be interesting to see if he kicks off his tenure by addressing some of these topics.

New QB crop
Quarterback is the most important position on the field and usually brings with it the most scrutiny — outside of the head coach. That is why, when only five of the 14 teams bring a quarterback as one of its player reps, it highlights the deficit of big-name signal callers in the SEC this year.

Only four teams (Arkansas, Mississippi State, Missouri and Tennessee) return starting quarterbacks, meaning more than 70 percent of the SEC must replace last year’s starters. Headlining that group are Alabama and Auburn.

But while the Crimson Tide is seemingly one of several teams still trying to figure out who the starter will be, the Tigers seem set with junior Jeremy Johnson, who bided his time patiently as the backup to Nick Marshall the past two seasons.

Among the other SEC teams with uncertainty at QB are Alabama and Auburn SEC West rivals LSU and Ole Miss, as well as usual SEC East frontrunners Georgia and South Carolina. Clearly, who emerges at quarterback for these key programs could make all the difference in how the conference standings play out.

New coordinators
This offseason, as is the case from time to time, saw quite a bit of coaching turnover among the SEC coordinator ranks, including at Auburn, where former Florida head coach Will Muschamp comes in to revamp the Tigers’ beleaguered defense.

There was plenty of turnover among West division defensive coordinators, with John Chavis leaving LSU for Texas A&M and former linebacker coach Kevin Steele leaving Alabama to take the reigns at LSU.

Georgia, the likely SEC East favorite, enters the 2015 season with first-time college coach Brian Schottenheimer taking over for longtime Bulldogs offensive coordinator Mike Bobo, who replaced new Florida head coach Jim McElwain at Colorado State.

McElwain brought in former Alabama offensive coordinator Doug Nussmeier to lead the Gator offense and ex-Mississippi State defensive coordinator Geoff Collins to do the same defensively.

Will Muschamp and the other new coordinators be able to repeat the quick success Lane Kiffin had in his first year guiding Alabama’s offense? It’ll certainly be something to keep an eye on throughout 2015.

How the SEC is won
Once again, it appears the SEC is not-so-evenly divided, with the West again expected to carry the load with a wide array of playoff-worthy teams and the East a relative uncertainty top to bottom. For what seems like the 10th year in a row, preseason odds favor either Alabama or Auburn to come out on top in the West ahead of other programs such as Ole Miss and Mississippi State that are easily capable of supplanting either one of the aforementioned favorites.

At the same time, Georgia is the East favorite by relative default, despite Missouri and returning starting quarterback Maty Mauk having represented the division in the last two SEC title games. Then there’s the unknown revivals taking place in Florida and Tennessee, the latter representing a potential surprise on the rise in the third season under Butch Jones. And then there’s South Carolina and Spurrier, who was rumored to be on the verge of retirement after a disappointing 2014 but promised to stick around a few more years to try to get the Gamecocks back among the conference elite.


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[TerryP]

In the last 24 hours I've seen at least a half of a dozen writers refer to the events this week as "a circus."

Am I the only one that finds it a little ironic that it's a "circus" of their own making? Yet, it certainly seems they're trying to separate themselves from the fray portraying themselves as being above the show.