HOOVER, Ala. - Will college football’s top conference keep growing?
The SEC, home to the past seven BCS national champions, expanded to 14 teams entering the 2012 season.
Veteran SEC commissioner Mike Slive is eager to see his league retain its dominance, but he isn’t ready to add to new members.
In an interview with the Orlando Sentinel, Slive talked about potential future conference expansion, the SEC’s strong run in BCS title games and his potential retirement plans:
Q: Do you foresee conference expansion continuing and adding more teams to the SEC?
Slive: “I can’t speak for anybody else, but it is not on our agenda. I was telling somebody earlier today that it’s not on the front burner and if it was on the backburner there is no flame. It’s just not on our agenda. As a matter of fact, when you look back, when we expanded we weren’t going to expand. If [Texas] A&M and Missouri hadn’t come to us, we still would have been 12. Now will anybody else is going to do it, well, your guess is as good as mine. Having said that, as I think about the national scene, stability would be helpful.”
Q: What do you see as the impact of the BCS format entering its final year before the start of the college football playoff?
Slive: “I think history will show that the BCS in many ways is responsible for the immense popularity in college football. In part because it nationalized games that in the past would have been regionalized only. As the season wears on, everybody playing everybody everywhere in the country is relevant to your own aspirations. As a result, a national championship game emerged.
“It’s fair to say that the foundation of the College Football Playoff is the BCS and it deserves credit for that. Fully understandingthat people weren’t satisfied with it figuring it didn’t go far enough. It did accomplish what it was intended for and as a result we do have playoff.”
Q: Has it been sweet to see the SEC win seven consecutive BCS titles?
Slive: “It is sweet and eight would be sweeter. It’s an incredible record and hard to comprehend. I think in terms of Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak or John Wooden’s UCLA basketball teams. Those kinds of records. It’s a record I can’t imagine ever being broken.Is it sweet? Yes. Is the playoff concern? No. Because we decided the best four teams need to play for the national championship. We’re comfortable the SEC will have its opportunity in the new system.”
Q: Are you a proud papa when you look at the SEC and its success?
Slive: “Since I’m older, people say I’m a proud grand-papa. There’s some satisfaction in all of this. It’s exciting. It’s new and fresh. Where else do you start football in the middle of July. But there is a sense of satisfaction that some of the issues that we dealt with 11 years ago are no longer part of us and this is now a very forward-looking … we’re forward-looking.The people who cover us are forward-looking.”
OS: Now that you’re 72 and have achieved this success, have you thought about when you will retire?
Slive: “It comes to mind only because my contract comes to term next summer so I’ve been asked a lot about it and I said, you know after a busy year and a busy several years with expansion and the network, I want to take the summer and relax and be with my family including my new granddaughter. And then sometime during the next six to eight months, we’ll figure it out. And I do remind people that it takes two to make this decision. It’s not an unilateral decision by me.”
Sports, Pages 19 on 07/20/2013