College football’s most powerful man will return for one more year in charge of the most powerful conference. Mike Slive, commissioner of the SEC for 12 years, told AL.com he intends to remain in his position for another year.
“I’ve got too much going on,” Slive said to AL.com. “I’ve got the (SEC) Network to work on. I’ve got football scheduling to solve. We’ve got the NCAA restructuring. We’ve got a lot of important issues to take care of. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Earlier in the day it was announced the SEC Network will be carried nationally by DISH as part of a mega deal between the satellite provider and Walt Disney Company. The network launches on August 14, just in time for the upcoming college football season. The SEC Network was announced last summer and is the latest project to be seen through from start to finish by Slive. During Slive’s run as commissioner the conference has also been involved with the college athletics realignment with the additions of Texas A&M and Missouri and the conference has emerged as a dominant power in the later stages of the BCS Era. through it all the SEC has improved in marketability and that means more money to be split among SEC institutions.
So what does Slive want to come back for in 2014 in to 2015? Aside from a nice paycheck and the formal launch of the SEC Network (it’s a pretty big deal if you have not figured it out), Slive will oversee the SEC as college football moves form the BCS Era to the College Football Playoff. Stumping to put SEC schools in the best possible position will be on the to-do list, although Slive will not have a part in the selection process for the new playoff format. His opinions will certainly merit attention through the media. Slive is one of the key influential voices in the game of college football, rivaled by Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany. The idea of future expansions within the SEC and the entire realignment scene now drying up, it would be unlikely to see Slive dabble in the realignment game any more over the next season.
This is not to say Slive will have an easy job ahead of him through the end of the 2014-2015 calendar, because every commissioner’s job is loaded on a daily basis. For now, ensuring the future stability of the SEC brand will be his main job, and that looks to be a relatively low-pressure task.