SEC Media Days: Takeaways from four days in Hoover

RELATED: Coaches debate value of satellite camps | Freeze defends Ole Miss in Hoover

HOOVER, Ala. – Everybody hates satellite camps. Well, most people at SEC media day anyway.

On Wednesday, Arkansas’ Bret Bielema called them a “colossal pain in the back end,” even if he did concede that they helped him land a couple of recruits. Highly-rated prospects think they're over-saturated. Reporters hate covering them in the summer heat.

There are two groups of people that seem to be excited about these things:

Group 1: The few under-recruited prospects that somehow manage to stand out from the massive, cattle call crowds are discovered and earn offers on the field.

Group 2: The host high schools or “training groups” that charge kids of any talent level to attend and pocket massive amounts of money for hosting an event that college coaches work free of charge.

But problematic or not, the camps aren’t going to stop. Not holding them while everyone else does will be perceived as lazy. Thus the camps will roll on - and probably expand for that matter - while everyone involved continues to complain.

Can we please - pretty please - stop equating the lack of social media with increased focus or a strong moral compass?

On Monday, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey used Texas A&M defensive lineman Myles Garrett’s decision to delete his Twitter account to illustrate his righteousness in the same breath as he touted Arkansas linebacker Brooks Ellis’ 3.8 GPA and mission trip to Belize.

The note on Garrett actually followed a sentence on South Carolina offensive lineman Mason Zandi’s father, who escaped Iran during the revolution. The two things are only correlated in the copy of lazy columnists desperate for talking points and in the minds of people that refer to the Internet as “cyberspace.”

Can social media cause trouble for an athlete? Yup. But to pretend opting out of Twitter makes an athlete virtuous is both illogical and trite.

Jim McElwain does not lack in charisma.

The second-year Florida head coach’s media session doubled as a comedy bit. The laughs were frequent and the smiles were widespread. His demeanor will serve him well in recruiting as he continues to forge relationships in Florida. If the Gators perform on the field, McElwain will be able to sell the program (and himself) to any number of big-time prospects.

His persona is one to which people are drawn. That much is clear, but it will only matter if the Gators produce in the fall. There may not be a more charismatic coach in the league this side of Les Miles.

Mississippi State head coach Dan Mullen skated away from Hoover relatively unscathed. Reporters didn’t hound him over his one-game suspension of Jeffery Simmons stemming from a video that featured Simmons punching a woman on the ground.

Questions were asked, sure. A few of them were tough and direct, but Mullen spent as much time discussing his jersey numbers, quarterbacks, future schedules and his Yeezy Boosts as he did Simmons’ woefully short suspension. The lack of discussion is no fault of Mullen’s, of course.

A coach can only answer the questions he’s asked.

Some form of conference-wide (or larger) domestic violence edict is coming. The idea of a standard suspension/dismissal for such crimes was floated and there wasn’t much pushback. And while the details are obviously yet to be discussed and any future implementation could be tricky, it seems both prudent and possible that some sort of policy will eventually be enacted.

Regardless of how many infractions Hugh Freeze’s Ole Miss staff did or didn’t commit, he handled a litany of tough questions with relative grace on Thursday. Sure, most could have done without the use of Bible verses in his responses, but that’s always been part of Freeze’s persona.

Otherwise, the Ole Miss coach dealt with repetitive and difficult questions, some of which bordered on accusatory, as well as could have been expected. Freeze had the look and feel of a coach that truly believed he did nothing wrong regardless of whether or not that’s actually the case.

“At Arkansas we're not built very sexy, we're just kind of a work in progress. We need a lot of time in the bathroom to get ready and come out and look great. But when we do, we'll stop time. And at some point we'll get to where we want to be.”

- Arkansas head coach Bret Bielema

“I have zero interest in cutting corners to be successful,”

- Ole Miss head coach Hugh Freeze in response to the ongoing NCAA investigation of his program

“For me I have to see with my own eyes exactly where we are. The film lies. Anybody can put together a highlight tape. I need to see the young man work.”

- Vanderbilt head coach Derek Mason on his recruiting evaluations

“I don't know whether our administration has it in our budget to do that.”

- Florida head coach Jim McElwain on the “state championship” rings handed out to Florida State players after beating Florida and Miami in 2015.

“I think if I’m being called the dean, I should probably get a robe and a hat.”

- LSU head coach Les Miles on his position as the SEC’s longest tenured coach.

“I don’t remember the situation. I black out sometimes.”

- South Carolina head coach Will Muschamp on a halftime locker room tirade that resulted in a broken finger last season

“I’m pretty swagged up right now,”

- Mississippi State head coach Dan Mullen on his Yeezy Boost shoes.

“I’m not running around here trying to catch Pokemon.”

- Kentucky running back JoJo Kemp on the Pokemon Go craze that has swept America.