Arkansas Sports 360 - ArkansasSports360.com

7/21/2010 at 10:19am

More than 1,000 members of the media (including some yahoos pretending to be the media, we're sure) are descending on Birmingham, Ala., suburb Hoover starting today for the Southeastern Conference Media Days. That group includes print, TV, radio and Internet media personnel, including our own Chris Bahn and Max Farrell.

It's a "big deal," as they say. It's a national draw with writers from coast-to-coat, but rest assured it's not cheap even for some folks to travel the several hours within the SEC states to Birmingham, stay in the host hotel the Wynfrey for three days, and hear more "what might be" from the 12 SEC football coaches and 36 players. But attending means that writers and broadcasters might stumble onto back stories and other interesting notes they can use for preseason previews or for their fall coverage. CBS and ESPN send many of their TV personnel who will also be covering the games during the season.

A generation ago, the major conferences from the SEC to the Big Eight to the late Southwest Conference would entertain its army of reporters with a tour stopping in every league town at every school. The Big Eight called theirs the "skywriters tour," since they flew to several stops. In the nine-team Southwest Conference of 1991, the only towns that had required flying to were Lubbock, Texas, and Fayetteville, Ark. The expanse of the Big Ten and the SEC (even pre-Arkansas and South Carolina) required flying to and fro for nearly two weeks.

Hence, the better idea arose to bring all the schools, their coaches and three stars (up this year from the usual two players), to one locale for three days.

For a writer who enjoyed each Texas city stop for its uniqueness, plus the bonding with my SWC writing brethren, I'm not sure the current setup is necessarily "better."

Give credit to the Sun Belt Conference, which at times convened its Media Days in New Orleans, for embracing the Internet age and using teleconferencing. Nobody spends any money to travel to a central locale, even for a couple of days -- not the media, not the schools. The coaches and players stay at home, stare at a TV camera, and the media participates from the confort of their own offices.

Lost is the intimacy of one-on-one interviews with the player or the coach off in a corner, away from the cameras or the main stage of a press conference. Gained is the ease to conduct an all-at-once press conference to serve everyone.

Arkansas State's turn in the Sun Belt Conference Media Days came Tuesday, where Coach Steve Roberts and star defensive lineman Brian Hall waited patiently at a table, camera detailing their every move for about 10 minutes, before the press conference officially began. Nobody said anything we hadn't already heard interviewing both of them for the ArkansasSports360.com Football Preview.

Roberts said he couldn't wait for the start of practice Aug. 4. He had heard the players-organized workouts this summer were going well, especially with more time to perfect the no-huddle spread offense implemented by new offensive coordinator Hugh Freeze.

Middle Tennessee Coach Rick Stockstill followed ASU's 30 minutes, and Stockstill addressed what's expected now that the Blue Raiders had a breakthrough 10-win season and expect to contend for the league title. "How do you handle having a bull's-eye on your chest every week," he was asked. Stockstill pointed out that in Middle Tennessee's view, Troy is the one with the bull's-eye, having won the league against last year and having whipped the Raiders 31-7.

Where the Sun Belt is concerned, some of its usual writers might also be in Hoover, Ala., this week, so asking them to also attend two days in steaming New Orleans -- or even steaming Hot Springs, where the league brings everyone together for the post-season men's and women's basketball tournaments -- beforehand might have been a stretch. Of course, we're talking maybe only one-twentienth of the media that is populating Hoover would have bothered to cover Sun Belt Media Days.

It may only be a matter of time before economic concerns cut into travel budgets for SEC media and eventually require the SEC to look at videoconferencing. The major press conference for each coach is already carried live on ESPNU. But as long as a thousand strong pile in to the Wynfrey and frequent the Hoover and Birmingham eating and drinking establishments and hammer out one more preseason story, it will probably remain the current tradition.