The South rises: SEC Nation achieves world dominance

Stimulus package?

They don't need no stinkin' stimulus package.

The world around it is all fall down, but Southeastern Conference football is a kingdom and a power, the star of college sports, a pig in slop, oozing success and dollars, an unstoppable force, even now - even at media days.

There are no media days like SEC football media days. They're easily the biggest in the South since the last Civil War media days.

"We'll start with opening comments by President Davis. Then he'll take questions before he is joined by student-generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jackson."

Now SEC football media days stand out even more.

All over college sports, in response to financial times and plain lack of interest, other conferences, those crabs scuttling about the floor under the SEC's feet, are shortening media days, or making them pure Web events or eliminating them altogether. The Atlantic Coast Conference pulled its football media days out of Florida to a more central location and reduced the event from three days to two.

Maybe they should just go door to door.

I can just see Bobby Bowden helping you in with the groceries.

"Coach, the lettuce goes in the bottom drawer. ... Now, what did you say about those 14 wins?"

Meanwhile, the SEC says:

More wine!

Here in suburban Birmingham, at a hotel attached to a mall, the SEC steamrolls along with a three-day granddaddy attended by nearly 1,000 credentialed media. On Wednesday, a black stretch limo sat out front, having dispatched more football gods, coaches and their players to appointed interviews. There is even a "radio row," just like at the Super Bowl.

SEC commissioner Michael Slive proudly boasted there were 28 stations broadcasting live from the hotel.

I walked the row myself and asked whether the "Big Dog" was around. Eleven guys stood up.

Halls were filled with journalists waiting to hang on the words of any coach or player placed before them. And Day One was just the warm-up act. Arkansas, Vanderbilt, Mississippi State and Kentucky, the conference mutts, were on tap.

Good old-fashioned fans and assorted strains of worshipers start showing up at the hotel today. Today starts the big dogs. Today is Alabama, with Bama fans crowding the lobby, trying to touch the hem of Coach Nick Saban's garment.

Today is Ole Miss, suddenly a player. Today is Georgia - and today is Florida, the defending national champs, with Uncle Urban and the boy prince, Tim Tebow.

Friday is for LSU and for Auburn and for South Carolina before Tennessee ingénue Lane Kiffin, chum for the sharks, wraps it all up, no doubt by saying more things that will make people's heads explode.

In the SEC, coaches are rock stars. No other conference has a lineup like this. Arkansas' Bobby Petrino and Kentucky's Rich Brooks would be major players at any other media day. Not here. But the headliners are changing. Steve Spurrier, in his own way as important to this conference as Bear Bryant, is still loads of fun, but really, he's a mere appetizer these days, not the main course.

Before the rock stars, like Saban and Urban Meyer, the commissioner, as required by Southern pride, reminded us of the world order, about that:

• The last three national champions have come from the SEC, four in the last seven years, seven in the 11 years of the BCS.

• Average SEC attendance was a nation-best 75,000, or 97 percent capacity.

• More than 450,000 fans attended SEC spring games.

• The SEC's new zillion-dollar deal with ESPN means every SEC game will be televised until the end of time, with the promise that if man ever reaches Mars, Alabama-North Texas will be shown there.

Here at the center of the college football universe, Slive also said the conference's uranium enrichment program is proceeding steadily and will only be used in the name of peace.

Actually, he said no such thing - the SEC is not enriching uranium or trying to acquire nuclear weapons.

Who needs them?

Hey, let's see Iran's TV deal.

Sailing off the deep end, even beyond football, Slive said that at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, current and former SEC student-athletes won 51 medals.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he added, "If the SEC were a nation, we would have finished fourth in the world medal count."

China, which finished ahead of the SEC, shouldn't count. Do you know how lousy attendance was at their spring game?

I sat tranquilized.

SEC football is a nation.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get down to the hotel lobby. Saban is going to heal the sick.

I think ESPN is joining it in progress.

You can run from the SEC, but you can't hide.

Recession?