SEC Media Days: Conference Q & A

Another summer wanes and another SEC Media Days is upon us.

Rarely does anything of note come from this event. Yet, SEC football fans gather any and all information they can as the unofficial kickoff to the 2010 season takes place in Birmingham, Alabama.

So, the guys from the SEC Breakdown pose some their biggest questions and answers for the football conference.

What should the SEC do about agents and such?

J. Newcastle
I think Nick Saban is right - kick them out of the process. That will send a message across college football that the only real change is going to come from this side of the ball. The NFL always has and always will do whatever it wants. So, build the fence, dig a moat, and set out the dragon at the gates.

Alan Rouse
Agents should be held liable for things of this manner. There really should be criminal laws in place to prevent that. I also think if an agent does something to make a kid ineligible, the NFLPA take away their privileges to be sports agents.

Eddie McCoy
What can the SEC do? Not much. The fact is that players are going to make bad decisions and to blame the agents for those bad decisions solely is completely ignorant to the fact that the players made bad decisions. I agree that the NFL should ban the agents doing so for at least a year, but I also believe that the players deserve to lose some significant playing time. Players today are more pampered than ever, and if you don't believe it, look at the success of recruiting services such as Rivals and Scout.

These kids are big time stars with websites way before they ever announce what school they are going to play for. The culture leads these players to believe that there is a sense of entitlement, when really there is not. I say punish the players severely, and go after the agents as well. SEC should stay out of it and report it when events take place and suspend players per the NCAA guidelines.

Josh Hathaway
The first thing the SEC needs to do is exhale. Let us not hyperventilate: agents paying players didn't just start this summer on South Beach. This has been going on for decades. Let's not even kid ourselves into thinking it's suddenly gotten worse or more brazen. Reggie Bush and his family were living in a palace in LA four or five years ago and even that doesn't count as a marked upsurge in unscrupulous behavior of agents and players or a willful blindness to such by universities. It's a problem on multiple fronts and can't be fought by one school or one conference, nor is there a single policy change that can be instituted that will eradicate the problem. There may well be a series of steps that can be taken to tighten it and those should be explored. But even some of the ideas making headlines today won't do the job entirely.

Article Author: J. Newcastle

J. Newcastle writes for BC Sports. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/j_newcastle

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