HOOVER, Ala. — Though he admits he prefers to keep his focus on the future, Mike Slive went digging into his past.
The look back resulted in the discovery of his notes from his first news conference as the Southeastern Conference’s commissioner 10 years ago.
“I went back and looked at … what I said that year,” Slive said Tuesday afternoon to open the SEC’s annual football media days at the Wynfrey Hotel. “It wasn’t very impressive.”
What his league has done since has been a completely different story.
In Slive’s decade-long reign atop the nation’s best athletic conference, the SEC boasts an ongoing run of six consecutive football titles and 62 national championships in 16 of the conference’s 20 sponsored sports. The league won nine titles — five in women’s sports — with seven second-place finishes in the 2011-12 academic year alone.