SEC Network makes more plans for launch
The SEC Network unveiled more plans Friday for next year’s launch, including a traveling two-hour football pregame show that will air from a different campus each Saturday.
The show, to be called SEC Nation, will be shown from 10 a.m. until noon ET, meaning it will compete for viewers with ESPN’s popular “College GameDay” show.
“On ‘SEC Nation,’ we’ll try to be a little different,” said Stephanie Druley, SEC Network’s vice president of production. “The thing that’s unique about the SEC … is the pregame experience, and we want to take people into that. We want people at home to feel like ‘I’ve been there, even though I haven’t.’ Because there is nothing like it: the sights, the sounds, the feeling of family.”
The SEC Network — a planned national cable channel that is a partnership between the conference and ESPN — previously announced it will launch Aug. 21. It plans to carry about 45 football games, 100 men’s basketball games and hundreds of events in other sports each year as part of around-the-clock programming of all things SEC.
ESPN remains in negotiations to get the channel distributed by cable and satellite providers.
Among plans discussed at a Georgia Dome news conference Friday:
- The SEC Network will broadcast its first football games Aug. 28 — a Thursday night doubleheader of Texas A&M at South Carolina and Temple at Vanderbilt. "In the span of two or three days, we will have five football games on the SEC Network and then a triple-header every Saturday thereafter," SEC commissioner Mike Slive said.
- ESPN broadcaster Joe Tessitore will host the weekly "SEC Nation" show. Tessitore joked that he asked Auburn athletic director Jay Jacobs for advice when offered the role. "And Jay told me, 'Joe, it would be un-American to snub the SEC,'" Tessitore said. It was a reference, of course, to Jacobs' controversial comment that it would be un-American to leave a one-loss SEC champion out of this season's BCS title game.
About the Author
Tim Tucker, a long-time AJC sports reporter, often writes about the business side of the games. He also had stints as the AJC's Braves beat writer, UGA beat writer, sports notes columnist and executive sports editor. He was deputy managing editor of America's first all-sports newspaper, The National Sports Daily.
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