12 notable quotes from SEC Media Days

Another SEC Media Days is in the book and while there wasn’t a ton of breaking news or earth-shattering developments this week in Nashville, Tenn., many interesting things were said. By coaches — and by players. Here’s a look back at 12 notable quotes from the 2023 SEC Media Days.

Florida coach Billy Napier: “I’ve been very impressed with Graham. Graham is a 32-start player. He’s played over 2000 snaps at a really established program in Wisconsin. We went through an extensive process to make that decision. I think Graham is an accomplished player but more importantly, I’ve been impressed with the person, the leader. This guy has an incredible motor and work ethic. He is in the building and he is fanatical about his preparation.”

Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher: “You’re never under the radar in the SEC.”

The Pac-12 ain’t the SEC

LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels: “The biggest thing I see the difference from Pac-12 to SEC is the big boys up front, you know, with the O-line and how big they are. You have guys like, for example, Maason Smith. That’s a humongous human being that can move like that. You know, you are playing against those guys each and every week. I say just to be a successful SEC quarterback you have to go in there and just really prepare — prepare like a pro. If not, you know, you might get exposed in this league because there are some great players out there playing against you.”

Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin: “I think we have a lot of work to do (on defense). We had some significant players injured in the spring, including Cedric (Johnson). …We had a lot of new staff over there. That’s a huge challenge for us in this camp coming up. Just to get everything installd, get all the moving parts and figure out who we’re going to play. … We were pretty tireless at looking everywhere because we had a lot of needs and a lot of number issues that where there, especially on the back end. There’s a lot of new people, including some that weren’t here even in the spring. So, that’s going to be a big challenge bringing all those pieces together.”

NIL was discussed a lot at SEC Media Days

Arkansas coach Sam Pittman: “Well, I believe that kids know if they want to transfer. I think they know. It’s like a house, coming soon for sale. Now on Twitter, it’s: I’m getting ready to go in the transfer portal. Because rules say you can’t talk to them, all this, so they are letting the world know they are getting ready to. I think they already know. I think a week is plenty of time. It’s going to be a lot better for roster management and it’s going to be better for us that if a guy in the portal, it allows us to go back to high school and recruit. Right now it’s very, very hard if you lose a guy in the portal, not to go replace him with a portal guy.”

Tennessee coach Josh Heupel: “I thought throughout the course of the football season last year, we continued to get better a majority of the season and that’s what good teams do. The Florida win was a big one, absolutely, for our fan base as much as anything. Meaning many recent years, we had not had the same amount of success as we would have liked to. But for our players, there was great confidence going into it, and, yes, great confidence coming out of it as well.

Experience is a good thing … but talent also matters

Alabama coach Nick Saban: “I think experience matters, I really do, but I also think that when you have young players who are hungry and have great energy and enthusiasm, that’s helpful to the team chemistry as well. When you have as many people that go out for the Draft early and I’m not complaining about that. I love it when we have players that are good enough to go out for the Draft. You’re going to sort of always have a young team because you have four or five starters who would be coming back that all of a sudden are not back. I think one of the things that I tell all of our coaches and the players, our entire team, it’s really important that we develop the young players on our team because we are always going to have a young team and those guys need to be able to contribute early on.”

LSU coach Brian Kelly: “I would say that the thing that makes (NIL) difficult for us, all of us, is third-party involvement, and at what level does that third-party involvement influence the spirit of name, image, and likeness. I think that’s where we’re all at. If there are different laws, too, in each state, then the league is not balanced, either. To me, those would be the two kind of bullet points as it relates to NIL. I’m not here to fix it. I’m here to navigate it. If I can lend my experience in any shape or fashion, I will do that. But I can tell you what we’re living, and that’s third-party involvement and different rules of engagement by different states.”

Freeze becoming more of a CEO, he says at SEC Media Days

Auburn coach Hugh Freeze: “I think once upon a time I was probably one of the better play callers in college football. Obviously, better players make you a better play caller. I don’t know that I was the greatest play caller or one of the best play callers the last few years at Liberty. I managed the game really well and gave our kids a chance to obviously win some huge games, and we were really good on defense, and I kind of played to that. But coming back knowing what was all-encompassing to bring Auburn back, sitting in the chair that I have to sit in, I needed help.”

Georgia coach Kirby Smart: “So going back to the original question of you want to know what we can do better or what I can do better, well, there’s a lot of things we can do better. We can play much better pass defense late in the season. We can grow as a team and continue to get better on our special teams assets. It’s like a constant improvement for us, right. Better never rests. We firmly believe that. We’ve done a lot of studies this off-season at things we can do better and things we can improve on.”

Beamer dealing with a different looking roster in 2023

South Carolina coach Shane Beamer: “We have got 38 new guys on our football team and I know in today’s college football, rosters turn over more than they ever have, but 38 is a really high number when you talk about incoming freshmen and transfers. So we have gone from two wins to seven wins to eight wins, but it’s going to take that much more in every area.”

Tennessee quarterback Joe Milton III: “I’m extremely, extremely confident. I trust the guys around me. I trust my coaches to go through the preparation with me confidently. I’m extremely confident, and I’m ready for it.”

That a wrap from SEC Media Days 2023!