Off the record at Media Days

When the cameras are shut down and put away at the end of a day at SEC Media Days and attendees head to the restaurants, the juicy tidbits that are traded fly faster and longer than Tim Tebow and the events put on are (ain’t gonna lie) awesome.

While I’ve been doing my journal daily and posting stuff in it there is some stuff that I thought deserved it’s own story, so I’m just going to fill this story with news and tidbits from the halls of media days to the events that we are able to go.

Dish Network Media Event

Tuesday Dish Network invited the media to the Hoover Met for a barbecue and to also get the chance to meet Emmitt Smith– who is a spokesperson for them. The reason behind the event was that Dish is the only national provider who has the network currently.

Anyway, Dish put on a great night for us as they had greyhound busses pick us up at the media hotel and bus us over to the Met. Here’s the part everyone loved, the open cooler full of your favorite beverage that was for pre-gaming before the event.

Once at the event it was all you could eat barbecue with again your favorite beverage and that went for about 30 minutes before the great Emmitt Smith came out and got on stage to start the event.

Emmitt started off by saying it was great to be back in Alabama and that he remembers the day Florida rolled over Alabama when it was a “low tide” and he ended the speech by saying he can’t wait for Florida to play Georgia this fall on the network.

After that everyone was able to take a picture with Emmitt and the first 100 in attendance got a free autographed football from him, which for me being a huge fan, was awesome.

In closing, the event, I have to say it was a good time and Dish hit a home run because everyone was talking about their network for a whole night

Gator Shows on Sun Sports still?

I was told that Florida will be able to keep the Will Muschamp show, the Billy Donovan show, the Amanda Butler show and the Gatorzone show on Sun Sports this coming season as the SEC Network doesn’t have control over that yet.

One thing that will be missing this fall is “Breakfast with the Gators” as the SEC Network has those rights and Sun Sports isn’t able to show replays.

Also all minor sports will either be broadcasted on ESPN, SEC Network or on ESPN3 but some of the local Gator announcers will still be on there like Adam Schick and Mick Hubert.

 

Mixed reviews on Florida

In speaking with others from the media the predictions on Florida is mixed some think Florida has a good year and others think that Florida wins six games. The results are mixed on Jeff Driskel as well as some think he has a good year with Kurt Roper and others think he simply isn’t a good quarterback. I think the key thing to take away from this is that nobody truly has a feel on Florida and everyone is just guessing. One thing that is almost unanimous is that Will Muschamp needs to beat Georgia to keep the fan base happy.

Too many credentials given out?

The SEC is breaking records every year for credentialed media at media days but are they just giving them out to anyone? Well, I think so. On Tuesday someone from the Hoover Chamber of Commerce asked Butch Jones a question. I mean, I know we are in Hoover but why are they credentialed and more so why are they asking questions?

I guess the main thing I’m getting at is that with so many people who don’t have a place here is here and taking up time for people who need to ask questions. This is more me just rambling but something that bothers me.

 

Johnny Football still lives

I was able to hang out with a few Texas A&M and Texas guys on Tuesday night and we shared a lot of conversations about Johnny Manziel and how he’s just a fun down-to-earth young guy. One thing I didn’t know was that Manziel’s grandfather has a rooster named after him in Tyler, Texas because he use to attend rooster fights. I’m not going to lie I was just soaking all of this in because I like the guy, heck I even have a “Money Manziel” t-shirt.

Andrew Spivey
Andrew always knew he wanted to be involved with sports in some capacity. He began by coaching high school football for six years before deciding to pursue a career in journalism. While coaching, he was a part of two state semifinal teams in the state of Alabama. Given his past coaching experience, he figured covering recruiting would be a perfect fit. He began his career as an intern for Rivals.com, covering University of Florida football recruiting. After interning with Rivals for six months, he joined the Gator Country family as a recruiting analyst. Andrew enjoys spending his free time on the golf course and watching his beloved Atlanta Braves. Follow him on Twitter at @AndrewSpiveyGC.

1 COMMENT

  1. One guy who was very bullish on the gators is Tom Luginbill. He thinks the gators are right with south Carolina and Georgia in the East and thinks UF is more talented than either of them. He thinks the low end is eight or nine wins , but that they could win ten or eleven if things go well. He even picked UF as a darkhorse to make the playoff. He thinks all of UF’s problems last year were due to injuries. I know he was at the Miami game, so his logic doesn’t make sense to me, I think it was much more than injuries that were the reason for the team to lose at home to Vanderbilt for the first time since 1945 and also lose to an FCS school for the first time ever. But who knows, maybe he’s right and the Gators are in for a big year. Auburn is proof of that possibility.