The countdown to the 2016 college football season continued with SEC media days as the biggest names in the sport delivered at one of the biggest events of the offseason. Georgia’s Kirby Smart, Missouri’s Barry Odom and South Carolina’s Will Muschamp impressed in their first trips to the annual event in their new positions while a couple of veteran head coaches delivered some memorable quotes. Here is a look at the winners and losers from this year’s SEC media day.
Winner: Georgia Head Coach Kirby Smart
Georgia’s new head coach managed to tap around some tough topics including Sony Michel’s injury and Jonathan Ledbetter’s arrest, and his honesty when pressed on those issues was praised. Smart even joked about what meetings were like for assistants under Alabama head coach Nick Saban and he had a number of funny stories that helped him win the media over. Smart might be a rookie head coach but he showed a veteran poise at this event. There is no doubt he was among the winners at this event. However, winning media day doesn’t mean much. He’ll need to deliver wins in the fall to be considered a real champ.
Loser: Alabama Head Coach Nick Saban
It isn’t very often at all that Saban is considered to be on the losing side but he was in a tough spot fielding questions regarding the punishment for his players following offseason transgressions and he struggled with it. Offensive tackle Cam Robinson and defensive back Hootie Jones were allegedly arrested by a pair of officers that happened to be LSU fans in the offseason and rather than come forth with that information Saban simply told reporters, “you don’t know all the facts.”
This is a program that’s coming off a championship and was the pick by the media to win the conference again. There should be a lot of chatter about the program, the expectations and the prospects that could headline the 2016 NFL Draft. Instead, the focus was on the negative stuff and Saban decided to dodge all of it. Saban clearly needs to do a better job with being more transparent and he took a public relations hit at the SEC media day.
Winner: LSU Head Coach Les Miles
Miles was very fortunate to get another shot this season at LSU and he kicked off his SEC media day stop by rattling off all of his offseason stops as he always does. From a stop in Austin, Texas to Cleveland, Ohio for Game 6 of the NBA Finals, Miles made sure everybody knew how much he enjoyed his offseason. At a time when the pressure to win is greater than it has ever been for Miles, there is no doubt he made a cool enough impression to deserve recognition as an SEC media day winner.
Loser: Ole Miss Head Coach Hugh Freeze
Ole Miss football continued to be overshadowed by the NCAA investigations in to the program that spawned even before Laremy Tunsil’s NFL Draft day debacle. As you might recall, Tunsil had an interesting couple of days during the 2016 Draft as a video of him smoking marijuana was posted and he made some wild claims about money and benefits he had received. He didn’t exactly do his program any favors.
Hugh Freeze did his best to focus on the team at times but the bottom line was that everybody wanted the answers to what has been going on behind the scenes with the Rebels over the past few years. That made for an awkward period of time. Freeze did manage to say some very positive things about his football team but the problem was we didn’t hear as much about the current team as we probably should have. Remember, Ole Miss enters the season with the best quarterback in the conference and one of the best in the country. They have a team that could very well end up competing for a conference title. However, with the NCAA investigation the major theme for Ole Miss once again at the SEC media days, nobody wanted to hear about the future. The focus was on the past.
