BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — The Southeastern Conference Media Days are never short on amusing storylines and off-the-wall anecdotes.
The second day of Media Days provided its fair share of quotable material.
Arkansas
 
Junior quarterback Ryan Mallett said he has taken up swimming since breaking his left foot before spring practices.
“I feel like I’m going to try out for the Olympics in 2014,” Mallett said. “Is that when the next one is? I’m going to give it a shot.”
“I’ve been doing a lot of swimming to stay in condition. I haven’t been able to run to this point, so I’ve been swimming a lot, doing a lot of weight room stuff with upper body, a lot of single-leg stuff. It’s really helped me out. I’ll be ready to go in two weeks when we start.”
The second-year starter also talked about his ability to throw the long ball.
“I’ve always had a pretty strong arm since I was little,” Mallett said. “Some people call it the Mallett arm, the family arm. On my dad’s side, all the brothers, they could all throw the baseball really well. That’s really where I got it from, just playing with them ever since I was little, just maintaining and developing the muscles in my arm.”
Mallett’s coach Bobby Petrino said he has to monitor new social media like Facebook and Twitter.
“We had an incident last year where we had a young man that had to go in and get something done to his thumb,” Petrino said. “Nothing big. Had to go in and tie it down. We left the office. I get a phone call about 6:30 at night. It says, Hey, [sophomore wide receiver] Cobi Hamilton put on his Facebook that he’s getting his thumb operated on. Not that it’s a big deal, but it’s nice not to put things like that out there.”
“It’s the new part of the world. I think it’s up to us as a staff to do everything we can to educate our players about what’s right, what’s wrong, continue to work at that. I’m confident that our players know the difference now and choose to do what’s right.”
Petrino said he maintains a close relationship with former Florida State coach Bobby Bowden.
“I talked to him yesterday,” Petrino said. “He won’t be out of college football. He won’t be coaching. He’s going to be at a lot of ball games. Everybody around the country is asking him to come and watch their games, be at their spring games, be at their clinics, talk, advise. So he’s going to be very involved in college football still, but not as a coach.”
“He gave me my first job. He allowed me to grow and mature as a coach, as a man, and he led me to the Lord in 1986. So anything that Coach Bowden didn’t like, I don’t like either, I can tell you that.”
Georgia
Coach Mark Richt had a down year for his standards last season, going 8-5 and 4-4 in SEC play.
His 50-22 overall record would be satisfactory for most football teams, but expectations are always sky-high in Athens.
Richt responded to a questions about being on the coaching hot seat this season.
“I understand the business,” Richt said. “I understand just how things go. So I don’t worry about it. My goal is to focus on the important things and the things I can control. I can control my attitude. I can control my effort. I can control, you know, certain things. That’s what I focus on.”
Georgia is still searching for a new athletic director after former AD Damon Evans resigned less than a week removed from being arrested on a DUI charge June 30.
“I have a very good friendship with Damon Evans [and] was very saddened by what happened,” Richt said. “I don’t think it’s affected our coaches’ preparation or our players’ preparation.”
“It’s a plum athletic director’s job, a chance to run one of the finest college sports organizations in the country and one of the most fiscally sound programs in the country. I’m sure we’ll find the right man or woman for that job.”
South Carolina
Gamecocks coach Steve Spurrier has been a favorite of the media at the annual conference Media Days.
This year he didn’t disappoint.
Spurrier was asked about the increasing numbers of players getting arrested, and the coach recalled years gone by when players were less likely to get into legal trouble.
“I think they’re more common now because players are getting arrested for everything that in the old days they did not get arrested for,” Spurrier said. “I can sort of remember back in our day, if you were out and something happened, they would say, ‘Can you get home? We’ll drive you home,’ to some of my teammates. They did not go into the tank that night.”
“But nowadays, as we all know, you go straight to jail if you’ve broken the law. There’s no room for error. Times are a little different than they were 25, 30 years ago.”
Much has been made of Spurrier’s rocky relationship with SEC coaches. Spurrier was frank about his collegues in the conference.
“I don’t look at the other coach that much at all, to tell you the truth,” Spurrier said. “Some coaches I like a little better than others, obviously. Some of ’em are sort of pretty good buddies. Some of them I don’t talk to much. That’s probably true of all coaches everywhere.”
As predicted, Spurrier was asked about his All-SEC team ballet after leaving Florida quarterback Tim Tebow off the unit last year.
“Well, have Jevan Snead No. 1,” Spurrier said. “Somebody told me he wasn’t playing this year.”
“Yeah, I handled that very poorly last year. That was not worth all the drama that we put into it. But my director of operations got a raise out of the deal anyway.”
—-Contact Michael Lambert at [email protected].