- The SEC Football Media Days will be held in Tampa for the first time from July 20-23, marking Talkin' Season's debut in Florida.
- Six new head coaches, including Florida's Jon Sumrall, will participate representing over a third of the 16-team SEC.
- The SEC has adopted a nine-game conference schedule to enhance strength of schedule and competitiveness for the College Football Playoff selection.
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Talkin’ Season has never had a Florida address. That changes next week.
SEC Football Media Days sets up shop at a pair of luxury waterfront hotels in Tampa July 20-23, the first time the event has been staged in the Sunshine State. It’s about time — after all, it was Steve Spurrier who dubbed it “Talkin’ Season,” a nickname that stuck so well that the SEC has built its Media Days marketing around it for years.
Spurrier has a habit of things like that. He’s the same guy who called Florida Field “The Swamp” and turned the moniker into a household word. He never trademarked either nickname, and when people ask if he regrets that, he brushes it off like it’s nothing.
Imagine the royalty checks, though.
This year’s Talkin’ Season represents the unveiling of a radically reshaped conference, starting with the most crowded class of first-year coaches Media Days has seen in years. Six new leaders are set to take the podium, representing more than a third of the 16-team league: Kentucky’s Will Stein, Ole Miss’ Pete Golding, Auburn’s Alex Golesh, LSU’s Lane Kiffin, Arkansas’ Ryan Silverfield, and Florida’s own Jon Sumrall.
Sumrall gets his turn Wednesday, July 22, sharing the day with Alabama, Ole Miss and Texas A&M. The questions will find him fast: Will Buster Faulkner’s offense be more explosive than what he installed at Georgia Tech? How far along is Brad White’s defense? Who will emerge as the starting quarterback between Aaron Philo and Tramell Jones?
One thing seems certain: Whatever his answers, Sumrall will charm as he delivers them. He has worked crowds in Gainesville and around the state like an old pro. And he’s no stranger to the spotlight, having coached Tulane to last season’s College Football Playoff. Gator fans watching Sumrall’s Tampa talk will be ready to run through a brick wall for him.
The SEC has radically rewired the battlefield, too. Every coach will face the same question: how to handle the first season with a nine-game conference schedule. Less margin for error, fewer easy weeks. The SEC essentially signed up for more collective losses.
The bet is that those losses won’t matter as much as they used to. The CFP overhauled its evaluation metrics last year to weigh strength of schedule more heavily, and commissioner Greg Sankey pushed the nine-game schedule as the SEC’s answer to it.
Whether the CFP selection committee rewards that in practice remains an open question. Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz spent last November noting the committee ranked a two-loss Notre Dame team ahead of a two-loss Alabama team that had four ranked wins to Notre Dame’s one.
I believe the gamble will pay off. This isn’t new territory for the SEC. The league has spent decades selling itself as the conference that beats itself bloody every October — that reputation didn’t need a ninth game to reinforce it. All this does is turn up the volume on something the SEC already does better than any other league.
Sankey’s bet is that it works in the SEC’s favor once the playoff starts — teams that survived a gauntlet show up sharper than teams that spent November beating up on cupcakes. Book it: the SEC ends its three-year natty drought this season, forged by a schedule that’s just a louder version of what’s always made the SEC the SEC.
Four days, 16 coaches, one phrase that started right here in Florida. Talkin’ Season has come home.
Now we find out if anybody in Tampa actually says anything worth repeating.