SEC football’s talking showcase taking place in Dallas

Tennessee Athletics photo by Andrew Ferguson / Tennessee's Nico Iamaleava, shown here with coach Josh Heupel after the Volunteers routed Iowa 35-0 in last season's Citrus Bowl, is among the seven Southeastern Conference quarterbacks ranked among the top-10 players with the best odds of winning the 2024 Heisman Trophy.

By David Paschall July 13, 2024 7 min read

The Southeastern Conference is expanding its Football Kickoff Media Days showcase.

Some might say catering.

With Oklahoma and Texas having joined the league at the beginning of this month, this year’s media days is being staged Monday through Thursday in Dallas. Once a three-day event formed in 1985 to preview the league’s 10 member institutions, media days now consumes four days and contains 16 schools.

Birmingham, which houses the SEC headquarters, or its suburb of Hoover hosted media days from 1985 to 2017 and then again in 2019 and 2021. Atlanta’s College Football Hall of Fame played host in 2018 and 2022, with Nashville welcoming the event last year for the first time.

David Paschall

David Paschall has covered sports at the Chattanooga Times Free Press since 1999 and wrote for the Chattanooga Free Press in the nine years before that. David has mostly covered college athletics, with a focus on the University of Georgia from 2000 to 2019 and the University of Tennessee since 2020. He grew up in Chattanooga and is a graduate of the Baylor School and Auburn University. David has received multiple writing awards and has served as a Heisman Trophy voter since 2003. He has also worked in radio in Chattanooga and has been on the SEC Network's "Classic Rewind" series since 2014. David and his wife, Kelly, have three children — Conner, Emily and Spencer.

Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.