HOOVER, Ala. -- When Mike Slive replaced Richard Petty as SEC commissioner five years ago, the news passed most of us by.
|
|
| Slive on the SEC: 'There is no doubt there has been a change in the culture.' (AP) |
If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'.
The King and his high-banked racin' court live by those words. The Commissioner, though, has been determined to walk softly and parry the big hick.
SEC recruiters were known to swear allegiance to their school with one hand on the Bible and the other on their wallet.
You never knew when a recruit was going to need a $200 dinner. Or rent. Or a "date."
When Slive arrived on the job in 2002 (actually replacing the venerable Roy Kramer), he had this crazy idea to clean up the league's lawless image.
Image? Well, it was more stone-cold encyclopedic fact.
A "change in the culture," he politely put it.
Might as well try to teach Petty grammar. Cheating is so ingrained in the SEC that Southern culture was on the skids. It's also why it's amazing that Slive is tantalizingly close to achieving the inconceivable.
The magic date is June 11, 2008 -- 325 days and counting. If everyone behaves, that's when every SEC school will be out of NCAA jail, as a group, for the first time in 26 years.
Slive is crossing his fingers, toes and probably himself in the name of the Father, the Son and ... Holy Cow, let's pray it doesn't happen again.
"You've got to try," Auburn's Tommy Tuberville said. "Our league hasn't had a great reputation."
