5 things we learned Monday from SEC Media Days

DALLAS – SEC Football Media Days leapt out of the starting blocks Monday morning here at the Omni Hotel Downtown Dallas. Commissioner Greg Sankey and coach/player contingents from LSU, South Carolina, Ole Miss and Vanderbilt were first on the podium to discuss prospects for the coming season.

Preseason camps open on campuses in just two weeks and the first games are fewer than six weeks away. Accordingly, all of the first day’s participants seemed eager to finally discuss X-and-Os of the game, rather than all the peripheral issues currently encompassing the sport. As it went, though, there was plenty of talk on both counts.

Following are five things we learned from Day 1 of 2024 SEC Media Days:

No decision yet on tiebreaker

The SEC was expected to announce this week its new tiebreaker rules to determine its championship game participants. Alas, it did not.

That was the first question Sankey fielded after his state-of-the-SEC address Monday morning. He said league ADs were provided an update via video-conference call last Thursday, but they aren’t ready to unveil details.

“It is a lengthy plan consolidated around, I think, eight principles,” Sankey said, without sharing those principles.

Sankey said they’ll meet again in two weeks and “can finalize that any time between now and the start of the season.”

The 16-team league will no longer utilize East and West divisions in 2024 and, presumably, going forward. Instead, they’ll take the top two teams. That’s a complicated endeavor considering the schools are playing wide-ranging, eight-game schedules.

Reached later, SEC executive associate commissioner Mark Womack, who is overseeing the process, said his committee is “still working to finalize and work through the details.”

Womack did stipulate that College Football Playoff rankings would not be involved. Previous reports indicate the process will focus only on in-conference play.

Don’t forget about LSU

Georgia, Texas and Alabama have been the most prominently-mentioned teams when it comes to those that might contend for the SEC Championship this year, the first in an expanded 16-team league no longer separated by divisions. LSU coach Brian Kelly was here Monday to remind folks to not overlook his Tigers.

“This will be the deepest team that we’ve had,” said Kelly, whose first LSU team played Georgia in the 2022 SEC Championship Game. “I don’t know if that’s going to be relative to the expectations. All I can do is continue to work towards what our process is and then whatever the outcomes are going to be evaluated externally. ... I can tell you in year three, I’ve had really good success.”

Indeed, Year 3 has been very good for Kelly everywhere he’s been in his 33 years as a head coach. He won nine games and a MAC title in Year 3 at Central Michigan. At Cincinnati, it was an undefeated regular season and a Big East title. At Notre Dame, it was another undefeated regular season and a trip to the BCS national championship.

Year 3 at LSU will entail replacing the No. 1 quarterback in college football in Jayden Daniels. But the Tigers feel good about veteran Garrett Nussmeier stepping into a starting role. And LSU has its resident roll of super-star athletes, including linebacker Harold Perkins and deep group of play-makers at wide receiver and in the secondary.

Beamer bullish on his Gamecocks

South Carolina coach Shane Beamer is among a handful of SEC coaches listed on the proverbial “hot seat.” That’s the modern-day term for being in danger of losing his job. Beamer seemed aware of that distinction as he went second among SEC coaches on his turn at the dais.

The fourth-year head coach was defiant.

“I really, really, really like our football team in 2024,” Beamer said emphatically. “I know most of you don’t.”

Beamer is 20-18 with the Gamecocks over the last three seasons. The 47-year-old son of Hall of Fame coach Frank Beamer has extensive experience coaching around the league, including stops at Georgia, Tennessee and Mississippi State. He also coached at Oklahoma before landing South Carolina’s top post.

His fourth season will start by replacing quarterback Spencer Rattler, presumably with senior Luke Doty. Meanwhile, the Gamecocks face a tough schedule that will include road games at Alabama, Oklahoma and Kentucky. It does not, however, include a game against Georgia for the first time since South Carolina joined the SEC in 1992.

“We have a tough schedule we get to play,” Beamer said with an emphasis on the word “get.” “I look around at the SEC and everybody’s plays a brutal schedule.”

Sympathies extended to Lane Kiffin

Monte Kiffin, a longtime NFL and college football coach and father to Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin, died last Thursday at the age of 84. In introducing the Rebels’ coach to media Monday afternoon, Sankey asked Kiffin to share an anecdote or two about his father in his opening remarks. Then, Sankey asked reporters in the room to refrain from asking further questions about it.

Kiffin called his father, who coached for more than 50 years in college and in the NFL, a “super hero.” Monte Kiffin is best known as the architect of the “Tampa Two” defensive alignment. He assisted his son in his last head coaching stops at Southern Cal, Tennessee, Florida Atlantic and Ole Miss.

“It’s been an amazing outpouring,” Lane Kiffin said of the response from the football community. “The support, the stories from former players and former coaches and especially how many friends came out from the Bucs’ staff and community has been amazing. But now is not the place and time to go into a lot of this. That will be Saturday in Tampa.”

A celebration of life event is being held at Indian Rocks Baptist Church in Largo, Fla.

Measuring up to Georgia

After a slow and controversial start as a head coach, Lane Kiffin’s career has encountered a decidedly positive uptick in recent years, and lately at Ole Miss. After going 11-2 last year, Kiffin joined the great Johnny Vaught in becoming the only Rebels’ coaches with multiple seasons of 10 or more wins.

Ole Miss is credited for landing one of the best transfer-portal classes in the country this past year. Accordingly, the Rebels are expected to open the 2024 season as a Top 10 team.

Kiffin credits a 52-17 loss to Georgia last November in Athens for showing him where his team is coming up short.

“I said after the game, ‘we’ve got to recruit better players,’” Kiffin said. “That wasn’t a shot at our players. It was obvious we had a length and size issue. … In that game it was glaring. But I do think we addressed that.”

Indeed. With 24 incoming transfers, the Rebels’ 2024 class of transfers was ranked No. 1 in the nation by 247Sports.

Georgia and Ole Miss play again this year, on Nov. 9 in Oxford.

“We’re going to look better coming off the bus,” Kiffin quipped.

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