HOOVER, Ala. -- Will Bret and Gus talk nice or trade snippy remarks as they did last summer?
Is Will on the SEC's hottest seat?
What barbs has Steve got up his sleeve?
Will Les give us, or himself, more to chew on or scratch our heads over?
And just who is the favorite to carry on the SEC's streak of playing in eight consecutive NCAA championship games?
These and many other questions will be posed, dissected and discussed over the next four days as the nation's top football conference convenes at the Wynfrey Hotel for its annual media days.
A fourth day has been added this year after the additions of Missouri and Texas A&M in 2012 created a six-team glut on the second day the past two years.
"We got a lot of feedback last year that the middle day, with six teams on the agenda, was just too long of a day for everyone involved," said Herb Vincent, a Little Rock native who is the SEC's associate commissioner for communication. "By adding another day, it spaced out the teams more evenly across the week."
SEC partner ESPN will be here in force on its myriad of "platforms" to cover the news and help tout the Aug. 14 launch of the SEC Network. Last year's record of 1,239 credential requests is likely to fall yet again, as media and fan interest in the conference continues to grow.
Commissioner Mike Slive will get things started with his state of the SEC address at 11:30 a.m. One topic he is likely to address is how NCAA schools can better serve their athletes, with recent reports estimating the yearly out-of-pocket expenses for full-scholarship FBS athletes ranging between $1,000 to nearly $7,000, depending on the school.
The SEC comes into the College Football Playoff era, having won seven of the past eight Bowl Championship Series titles, its streak of seven in a row ended by Florida State's come-from-behind victory over Auburn last season.
Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Florida and South Carolina are expected to be among the contenders for berths in the new four-team playoff format.
Arkansas Athletic Director Jeff Long will chair the first College Football Playoff selection committee.
Fort Smith native Gus Malzahn, who steered Auburn from a winless conference season to the SEC championship in 2013 -- the first turnaround of that type in conference history -- will meet the media today, along with Florida Coach Will Muschamp, and Vanderbilt Coach Derek Mason and their players.
Muschamp's head coaching reins appear to have the least amount of slack after the Gators followed up an 11-2 record in 2012 with an injury filled slide to 4-8 last year.
Mason has taken over a Vanderbilt program coming off back-to-back nine-victory seasons for the first time. Mason is the only first-year coach at media days, marking the first time the league had only one head coaching change in an offseason since Nick Saban signed on at Alabama in 2007.
Saban, the four-time national champion coach and the Crimson Tide will appear on Thursday, along with Georgia's Mark Richt, entering his 14th season as the longest-tenured SEC coach, Ole Miss' Hugh Freeze and Kentucky's Mark Stoops.
South Carolina Coach Steve Spurrier, always an attention-getter, makes his 10th appearance as Gamecocks coach on Tuesday.
LSU Coach Les Miles, who argued openly about the SEC's unbalanced schedule for determining division champions last year and is always a candidate to provide media a jackpot of quotable material, will appear on Wednesday, the same day as second-year Arkansas Coach Bret Bielema and three Razorbacks seniors -- Trey Flowers, Brey Cook and Alan Turner.
Bielema, no slouch for an out-of-the-blue quote either, brought his opinions straight into the mix in his SEC media days debut last year.
He and Malzahn exchanged barbs relating to the hurry-up, no-huddle offense, but that topic has cooled off after a proposed 10-second rule for making substitutions was voted down in the spring.
The Razorbacks and Tigers open the season on Aug. 30 in Auburn, Ala., on the SEC Network, two days after Texas A&M at South Carolina serves as the network's debut game.
Sports on 07/14/2014