Chansky’s Notebook: Three Days in Hoover

This is today’s Art Chansky’s Sports Notebook as heard on 97.9 WCHL. You can listen to previous Sports Notebooks here.

The SEC has three football media days and the ACC has . . . hmmm.

I guess college football season is under way when the throng of SEC media heads to Hoover, Alabama, for three days of interviews with the coaches and players from the 14 programs, four exclusive hours apiece. Seriously, three days in Hoover, Alabama? It’s a good time to rob the confederacy.

Hundreds of media members flock to Hoover, and getting press passes for the confab is apparently harder than getting them for the SEC BASKETBALL tournament. Here is how the SEC kicks off the football season in Hoover.

Day one begins with the commissioner’s state of the state. And this year, new commissioner Greg Sankey quoted from Bob Dylan, starting off with the obvious things are a-changing. Then come the dedicated four hours with the teams, coaches and three players each coach brings along. This goes on for three full days in Hoover so the SEC can boast it has the first, the longest and the best preseason media coverage. As if we didn’t know that already.

I went to theACC.com, perhaps the slowest website in all of sports, and the only thing I could find was ACC Kickoff, July 19-21, in Pinehurst. But on the schedule, it has nothing scheduled for July 19, at least on its website. Maybe that is a day on Pinehurst No. 2, because that would be the way to start in my book. Somehow, the ACC gets its 14 coaches and players in front of the media in only two days.

After all, what does the ACC have to talk about that could last three days? Besides who has been suspended or kicked off at Florida State in the off-season, does anyone want to spend even one hour listening to Dabo Swinney, David Cutcliffe and Dave Doren? I guess I could take Larry Fedora for that long, but Mr. Fidgety can’t even stand still for six minutes, let alone 60.

Meanwhile, who can even name the coaches for Miami, Wake Forest, Virginia, Pitt, Boston College and Syracuse? I hope they hand out name tags. For the record, and I had to look it up, they are Al Golden, Dave Clawson, Mike London, Pat Narduzzi, Steve Addazio and Scott Shafer. Then you have Paul Johnson at Georgia Tech, Frank Beamer at Virginia Tech and Bobby Petrino at Louisville, all Mr. Personality. Not a Steve Spurrier or Nick Saban in the bunch, off the field or on.

Guess that’s why the SEC has three media days and the ACC has two, or is it three?