SEC Media Day: How Will Mike Slive's Proposals Change College Football?

The annual SEC Media Days kicked off today in Hoover, Alabama. SEC Commissioner Mike Slive addressed everyone to get things started, and he made some proposals that shocked several people.

Slive has been the SEC commissioner since 2002, and over the years he has seen his conference become the best in all of college football. 

During those years he has also seen several scandals in the sport of college football, and he believes it's time for a change. 

Yesterday, Slive hyped these proposals by telling reporters a change is coming to the NCAA.

Per ESPN:

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"I have a sense that there are several of us that feel like change is important and addressing these issues from a national perspective is important," Slive told The Associated Press.

"And I fully expect that we will do that, and I fully expect that the SEC will make every effort to contribute to that discussion and hopefully the appropriate action following those discussions."

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The SEC helps generate a lot of money for the sport, and the NCAA will no doubt listen to what Slive has to say. Remember that the NCAA will be meeting in August to discuss everything that has happened lately, as well as what the future holds for college football.

Slive made five key proposals for the SEC and college football in general:

1. He believes that scholarships should be a multi-year commitment from schools.

2. Academic requirements should be raised.

3. Players should be covered for full cost of attendance.

4. There should be clarification on rules-violation categories.

5. Recruiting rules should be modernized.

These are all serious suggestions, and in the coming weeks each commissioner from the power conferences needs to have his own suggestions or be able to react to Slive's proposals.

Multi-year scholarships would address the problem of over-signing, and the full cost of attendance for players would help crack down on players finding illegal ways to make ends meet. 

Of course there will always be problems because you cannot control what everyone does.

However, by giving the players $3,000 more a year, it will stop the boosters from throwing extra cash to big-time players, as well as reduce the number of players selling memorabilia for money.

I'm all for raising the academic requirements for incoming freshman and junior college transfers from a 2.0 to 2.5 GPA, simply because these are all student-athletes. 

Notice that student comes first there, but in reality, too often these kids just want to focus on football. Now they'll have to go to class, study harder, pass the big tests, and not skip out on academic appointments.

If you want to be the best you have to work at it, and academics comes with playing football at the collegiate level. You don't have to be the smartest, but it at least give it your best when it comes to your studies. 

Maintaining the grades in college needs to be a priority as well. Some players get to college and then just stop caring about academics. Football isn't going to be around forever, so having a backup plan based of your academic studies is a bright idea.  

Slive again makes a great point by stating that there needs to be improved enforcement. We've seen how the NCAA has handled scandals and incidents over the last year or so, and plenty of people have strong opinions on how the NCAA went about doing things.

Some have called the NCAA a corrupt organization and said that all they care about is money. Investigations often take too long or are way too quick, and that has to change.

However, the best proposal from Slive deals with recruiting.

He suggested that coaches should be allowed to use social media and texting to recruit players. If they can call these kids, then they should be able to text them or talk to them on Facebook and Twitter.

I wholeheartedly agree with this because it should be acceptable for colleges to maximize all of this during recruiting. Social media is taking over, and you'll find that young kids these days love using Facebook and Twitter.

It would change recruiting up and make it more challenging to land the best recruits in the country.

Plus it would be great to see Joe Paterno try to use Twitter.

These are merely propositions made by Slive and the SEC, but they needed to be said. College football has needed change for quite some time now, and soon we will be getting it. Obviously all of these won't go into place, but I commend Slive for speaking up. 

The sport of college football has some glaring needs that will soon be addressed.

What hurts is the fact that the issue of the BCS format and the possible change to a playoff or plus one gets pushed to the back burner because of all the latest scandals.