Tampa, Florida —
Before each coach takes the stage for his press conference at SEC Football media days, Commissioner Greg Sankey steps to the microphone for a brief introduction.
He runs through the coach’s bona fides and adds a non-football side note—who likes to play pickleball, or who recently went whitewater rafting. It almost feels like listening to famed public address announcer Michael LaFave at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. You half-expect Sankey to wind up a bio with, “Please welcome Akita number seven,” instead of, say, Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer.
On Wednesday afternoon, Sankey set the stage for Ole Miss head coach Pete Golding. He ran through Golding’s plucky coaching start at Delta State, his stops at other far-flung places, and his rise to defensive coordinator at Alabama. He explained that the Goldings are a golfing family, noting that this summer the coach caddied for his 11-year-old son, Bentley.
Thirty minutes later, Golding had essentially upended the rules of college football “talking season,” as the glut of July media days is often called. Typically, there is a lot of talking, but no one really says much. Not Golding. He dropped a “bullsh*t” and a “crap,” suggested that people still ticked off at his predecessor get over it, and answered a question about tampering allegations (of which he and his team have been accused) by essentially saying that tampering rules were silly.
