Kyle Veazey: A Q&A With SEC Football Writer

Today's Q&A interview is with Kyle Veazey, who covers Mississippi State and SEC football for the Clarion Ledger. He attended SEC Media Days in Hoover, Ala., last week, and shared via email some of what he observed there with OGS. You can follow Kyle on Twitter @kyleveazey.

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

One Great Season: For the anti-purists who love the excess of sports, why have SEC Media Days become such a circus?
Kyle Veazey: College football is such a year-round thing in this part of the country, so there's really not a dead time. There's always news, even if it requires a micro-definition of what really is news. Fans tend to want to judge participants for how they performed. This quaint notion that reporters are here gathering info and quotes for their preview sections (that come out) in late August is long gone. It's all about "now," and that's OK.

OGS: What was a typical day like in Hoover? Was there any one-on-one interview time or was it just a bunch of press conferences and filing stories all day? Any time for a cold beer with the fellas at the end of the night or were you wiped out by then?
KV: There were three days of four schools each. The main print media room had 40 minutes for coaches at the lectern and 20 or 30 minutes for players at tables where reporters gathered around on Wednesday afternoon and then Thursday and Friday mornings. There is about zero one-on-one time with coaches or players, but most media relations folks have their local beat guys upstairs for small-group stuff before the coaches make their way to the big room. Using this event to help build relationships with coaches or administrators, etc., is almost useless. (SEC annual meetings in Destin are much better for that. Lower-key.) I'll write/tweet/blog simultaneous to the press conferences (multi-tasking!) and do quite a bit afterward, too. Is there time for a cold beer? Sure. There's a bar down the street here that has become a favorite for the crew in which I run.

As a tangent, I'll say that Media Days has sort of become an unofficial annual convention for the SEC beat corps. There are many other reporters across the South who I count as good friends, but we rarely see each other. This is the only time all year we'll be in the same place for the same amount of time.

OGS: Did anybody see Robbie Caldwell coming? Was there an idea he'd steal the show like that on Thursday? What was your reaction to his comedy hour?
KV: Oh, man. I had no idea that he would. I grew up near Nashville, so I've watched a lot of Vandy coaches through the years. He's pretty entertaining. By far, he was the most entertaining coach I've seen here since I started coming in 2002.

OGS: What was the consensus among you and your colleagues in Hoover about Mike Slive's and Nick Saban's comments and the overall agent-runner controversy that became the hot topic? If there's no consensus, what is your take?
KV: I'm not sure there's an opinion about what ought to be done, both from my colleagues and personally, but it has become a hot topic. Especially Wednesday, given just how pointed some of the comments were. It was a bit out of the norm. I think the main thing is that people realize just how impactful this whole situation could become to some major programs in college football, even if the opinions about how to fix it are left up to the other guys.

OGS: Among the not-so-usual suspects, who could be a sleeper in the SEC this year?
KV: Call me a homer, but Mississippi State, the team I cover, has plenty of potential. Can it win the league? Would be amazingly tough, given that schedule, but I think it could at least surprise some folks. State is no easy out. Auburn might not qualify as "sleeper," but I like the team it has over there. South Carolina has quite a bit of talent but hasn't seemed to have found a way to get over that proverbial hump.

OGS: And individually, which player is ready to have a breakout season?
KV: For some reason, I like South Carolina quarterback Stephen Garcia. Something tells me Spurrier's going to make something out of him. Not really sure why.

OGS: Why has the SEC been so dominant the last four years in college football?
KV: The talent is here. Period. It's also a product of just how seriously people here take their football. Think of it this way: I cover Mississippi State, which will put 55,000 or so in the stands in a town of about 20,000. Eighty miles east of me, Alabama will put over 100,000 in the stands this year (I think that's the new capacity) in a town of less than 100,000. Ninety miles northwest of me, Ole Miss will have 50-60,000 in the stands in a town of 20,000 or so. On any given Saturday, you're looking at over 200,000 people in stadiums in this close area that doesn't exactly have a population base to logically support it. An industry source put it that way to me the other day, and it's eye-opening.

Now, think of the athletically gifted kid who grows up in this part of the country. What does he see as folks' biggest priority? College football, of course.

OGS: If all things are cyclical, what will have to happen for things to even out and for another league to push the SEC out of the way? And when do you expect that to happen?
KV: I don't see any time in the near future where the SEC cedes supremacy. Maybe a year or two, it doesn't produce the national champion, but it'll be hard to see any league that is as strong 1-through-12 as the SEC. At least for a while. And please don't think I'm Mr. Arrogant SEC Guy. People who know me know that's not the case. But objectively looking at it, it's just hard to see anything otherwise.

OGS: Which soon-to-be-expanding conference -- the Big 10 or the PAC 10 -- will be first to threaten the SEC's dominance?
KV: I think the Big 10 has had its chance to threaten and really hasn't. Adding Nebraska will help, but will it move the needle? The Pac-10's additions don't really look to make a seismic change, but I do think top-to-bottom it might make a strong case.

OGS: Why do non-SEC fans hate SEC fans so much?
KV: Ha! I was born and raised in SEC territory, the son of SEC fans, part of a family that discussed Tennessee football over the Thanksgiving table, and I went to an SEC school (Ole Miss). So, I've never had the outside perspective to probably adequately answer your question. My guess? The SEC is so damn good. Throw in the craziness of the fan attention, and it's easy to see how some of y'all with Northern accents would look down your noses at what we take as a big priority around here.

OGS: SEC Media Days haven't been the only aspect of your job to evolve in recent years. How have Twitter and social media changed the way you do your job and do you like it? Or do you miss the days of just having one deadline to write one story?
KV: That's a great question, John. In some ways, I do miss that. But that cat is out of the bag, so no use. And in most ways, I do like the changes. I'm appreciative of the freedom my editor, Rusty Hampton, and the people above him at our paper and in our company, have given me to establish these new ways of doing things on our beat.

We're not perfect. We feel our way through it. By and large, we've done a good job, not just at The C-L, but a lot of other reporters elsewhere. It's made this job a 24/7, on-call deal, which can wear you out from time to time. Yet, it's put us in a better contact with our readers. It's impacted the definition of "scoop" more than anything else. Since a scoop lasts, oh, five minutes, there's not much to hang your hat on anymore. The bigger scoop for a beat reporter in 2010, in my opinion, is making your overall coverage of an event smarter and more insightful than the other guy, time and time again. Because even if you're first, the other guy will catch up with you pretty quickly.

You know, all this gloom and doom about newspapers, and we're probably reaching more people than we ever have in our history. Thanks to blogs and Twitter and Web sites, we mean more to people than we ever have before. That's a good thing, regardless of how it makes you change your approach.