DALLAS — Auburn coach Hugh Freeze was the next-to-last coach to address “the big room” at SEC Media Days this week. So, he deserves some respect for recognizing the dynamics in the room when he stepped up to microphone late Thursday afternoon to talk to what remained of 1,200 credentialed reporters who already had heard from 14 other SEC coaches and a handful of special guests over the past four days at the Omni Hotel Downtown Dallas.
“Thank you for staying around,” Freeze said with a grin. “I know it’s been a long week.”
Freeze and his Auburn contingent came on after Sam Pittman and Arkansas and Mike Elko and Texas A&M and before Mark Stoops and Kentucky.
All that was left at the end of the day was tallying the media’s votes for the predicted order of finish and the 2024 all-conference team. Results of that often-ridiculed prognostication will be announced Friday.
Here’s some of what was gleaned from Day 4 at SEC Football Media Days:
The Cats’ dogs
Kentucky coach Mark Stoops was asked Thursday what he has learned about his first-year quarterback from Georgia, Brock Vandagriff.
“He definitely can catch some fish, that’s for sure,” Stoops cracked. “That was a big part of the recruiting pitch.”
So was being able to start for the Wildcats in the coming season. And while it has not yet been determined whether the 6-foot-3, 225-pound junior from Bogart will be QB1, Vandagriff clearly has made a positive impact already.
“Brock brings a little more level-headed mind and should be great for our offense,” Kentucky offensive lineman Marques Cox said. “Be gives us a level of calmness in the time we’ve been playing together. And ‘Pop’ brings the pop.”
“Pop” is former Georgia middle linebacker Jamon Dumas-Johnson. He, too, transferred to Kentucky after injuries and other issues limited his playing time with the Bulldogs last season.
Both are expected to be starters for the Wildcats when Georgia and Kentucky meet Sept. 14 in Lexington.
“Very good people; they come from a winning culture,” Kentucky linebacker D’Eryk Jackson said Wednesday. “They’re bringing that winning culture to our team in certain stuff they do. They just bring a winning mentality to the team and have meshed very well.”
Said defensive lineman Deone Walker of Dumas-Johnson: “They call him ‘Pop’ for a reason. He’s a great guy. He’s going to be one of our impact players.”
Technically neither player has earned a starting position yet. That will determined in August when preseason camp commences.
But it would be a surprise of Vandagriff didn’t take the first snap in the opener against Southern Miss. At Georgia, he would have been Carson Beck’s primary backup and one snap from being the starter.
“When Brock was in there, even if they had a lead or anything, you just saw the way he operated. For us that’s a big deal,” Stoops said. “We’ve always been a pro-style offense, so you know he was coached well there. You know it was complex. You know he was doing the right things, and he could come in and handle our situation. We felt very good about him being able to handle everything that we’re going to ask him to do.
He obviously has the talent. He just needs to get under center and get some reps.”
‘Pit Boss’ hanging tough
Arkansas’ lovable coach Sam Pittman can’t seem to catch a break. Entering what’s being a characterized as a very important season for his continued employment in Fayetteville, the Razorbacks open with the year with five games in five different venues.
Arkansas will open in Little Rock on Aug. 29 against Arkansas-Pine Bluff, then go to Stillwater to play Oklahoma State, comes back home to take on Alabama-Birmingham, then faces Auburn on the road and Texas A&M in Arlington.
“Yeah, we’ve talked about the schedule,” Pittman said as the first coach in the main room Thursday. “All I can say is we’re going to embrace that. Last year we had the away games right there in a row; what was it, at Alabama, LSU on the road. We need to do a better job than what we did a year ago.”
Pittman, 62, enters his fifth season as Arkansas’ head coach with a 23-25 record. After going 4-8 last season, this is considered a must-win season for the former Georgia offensive line coach.
“We have to finish the season, and we did not do that well,” Pittman said. “We lost a lot of close games. … Our fans deserve a team that competes at the highest level. We intend to give them that.”
Pittman’s big offseason move was bringing in former Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino from Texas A&M as offensive coordinator. The Razorbacks will field 39 new players, including 22 from the transfer portal.
After the fitful start early in the season, Arkansas’ schedule smooths out and in some ways seems favorable. The Hogs’ toughest games are at home, including Tennessee, LSU, Ole Miss and Texas.
“I’d like to get to the damn SEC Championship game,” Pittman said.
Home-cooking at Auburn
Auburn coach Hugh Freeze played dumb about Oklahoma and Texas joining the league this year.
“What, you mean I have to play Alabama, Georgia AND those two? Oh, great!”
Well, just three of those four this year. In fact, the Tigers meet the Sooners in Week 5 at Jordan-Hare Stadium. That’s the fifth in five consecutive home games to open the season.
Freeze likes that it may allow his team to build some early-season momentum, but he said the schedule is “not ideal” for Auburn fans.
First, it means Auburn faithful will be driving back and forth to the Plains for five consecutive weekend. Then the Tigers will host have zero home games in October.
That said, Auburn would love to be 5-0 heading to Athens to face Georgia on Oct. 5.
“All of those games are vital, and that stretch is going to really important to us,” Freeze said. “We know we have some of the greatest fans, and they’ll still show and they’re going to be there in Jordan-Hare.”
Freeze announced that Auburn’s season-ticket allotment is sold out.
Big opener for Aggies
Speaking of schedules, only Georgia, Florida and perhaps LSU could enter into an argument with Texas A&M about who has the toughest season opener. The Bulldogs draw Clemson at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, LSU gets Southern Cal in Las Vegas and and Florida plays Miami at The Swamp.
The Aggies open the season against Notre Dame in College Station.
Asked Thursday how he felt about playing a team of that caliber in Game 1, Texas A&M’s first-year coach Mike Elko was brutally honest.
“I’m a football coach. I’d like to play no teams of that caliber,” he said.
He was kidding. Sort of.
“No, I think it goes both ways,” said Elko, who comes to A&M from Duke. “The benefit of having a game like that in the opener is you have everyone’s attention. Our program is very much aware that we have to be firing on all cylinders the first time we run out of the tunnel. I think that has created an urgency in our program that goes all the way back to January.”
The Aggies have a lot of big games this fall, including a trip to Florida, playing Arkansas down the road from here in Arlington and facing LSU in College Station in late October. But the one everyone in Texas already is talking about is renewing the rivalry against the Longhorns. That game will be played in College Station on the final Saturday of the regular season.
AI in the SEC
The temptation was to use artificial intelligence to report on the SEC’s panel discussion on the league’s use of AI. Alas, you’ll have to settle for a human summary about the informative seminar that took place in the Trinity Ballroom at the Omni Hotel on Thursday morning before even one coach mentioned blocking and tackling.
Moderator David Reed, an associate provost at the University of Florida, led six experts through an hour-long discussion about some of the ways AI is impacting the world and the SEC and how it might in the future. The panelists were: Asim Ali, executive director of the Biggio Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning, Auburn University; Sean Donovan, chief Innovation officer, TRG; Deon Gordon, executive director, TechAlabama and CEO of TechBirmingham; Matt Landers, development lead, Google; Kevin Lopes, vice president for sports business development and innovation, ESPN; and Al Martin, vice president of technology sales, IBM.
Collectively, their message was that AI already is being heavily utilized in the arena of college sports marketing, especially in image generation and editing. But increasingly it’s being used in coaches’ offices to assist with processing heavy loads of statistical and video data they pour through to study opponents’ tendencies and improve their own predictive abilities.
In summary, the group encouraged everyone to embrace AI and not be fearful of it. It is meant “to be a tool, not a replacement,” and intended make our lives easier, Reed said. That goes for coaches, too.
“Get off the sidelines and try out AI,” Ali said.
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