It was SEC Media Days 2014 in Hoover, Ala., when I got the enduring memory of former SEC commissioner Mike Slive.
At the time, no one knew he was going to be announcing his retirement in a few months and he was the 74-year-old commissioner of a league that was introducing a new television network in less than a month in a world he never envisioned decades before.
As I strolled down radio row in the morning for our 8:30 interview, I saw Slive already sitting at my table. I checked the time on the back of a business card his assistant had given me a couple of days before and, yep, I was running about 45 minutes early.
Yet there he sat, at my table casually drinking coffee and reading Southern Jewish Life magazine, which he often had rolled up inside a jacket pocket. A diminutive man, he cast remarkable power and influence in growing the Southeastern Conference into a revenue machine in the world of college sports.
He greeted me, assured me I was not late and apparently the station he was supposed to be on with at 8 a.m. had not bothered to stay around for the final day … or notified him.
“Oh, they probably just decided to get out of town early,” he said.
He said it with absolutely no attitude whatsoever. I’ve known many that would have been downright miffed, at the least.
So we sat and talked while I started setting things up.
“Take your time,” Slive said. “We’ll just chat a bit while you’re setting up.”
The SEC Network was probably the cherry on the topping for Slive’s tenure as commissioner. There was a lot of talk about how the network came about and an overview of the process that had been in the works for a couple of years.
I asked him if he ever thought about it when he took over for Roy Kramer, who pioneered the expansion and growth of the league after he took over in 1990.
“I remember when a school could only be on television a few times a year (in the 1970’s it had gotten to where a team could only be on a national game five times over a three-year period),” Slive said. “So, no, I never really thought a league could support an entire channel, but things change and you have to be willing to accept that.”
Maybe nothing ever defined Slive’s tenure as much as that statement.
He took over from Kramer in 2002 as the internet was starting to blow up. Twitter and Facebook were still unheard of.
He oversaw a time of sweeping change in college athletics and managed a collection of universities as diverse as any league in the country. He did it quietly and, for the most part, staying in the background.
If he ever showed anger, it wasn’t general knowledge. He managed that group of universities with athletic directors with personalities as diverse as their schools with, well for lack of a better word, grace with a firm stance.
Kramer gets the credit for initial expansion, bringing in Arkansas and South Carolina, creating the first conference championship game and shooting the league into a spotlight never seen before.
But it was under Slive that the league turned into a revenue-producing cash machine. He was instrumental in the College Football Playoff and started the push for Power 5 schools to have autonomy in the NCAA.
He had continued in a consulting role after he stepped down in the summer of 2015, but it had strictly been in the background.
Slive passed away Wednesday at the age of 77. He had battled prostate cancer, but had survived that. A cause of death has not been released by the family.
“Mike Slive literally changed the world through his life,” current SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said.
A New York native who was a lawyer, judge and commissioner of the Great Midwest Conference and Conference USA before coming to the SEC.
In his tenure of roughly 14 years, the SEC won 81 national championships in 17 different sports during Slive’s tenure as conference commissioner.
He was considered by some as the most powerful figure in college sports.
During that time the SEC also won seven straight national championships from 2006-12.
“I can’t take any credit for that,” he told me back in 2014. “We’ve had some great coaches in our league that have really done well.”
That was typical Slive.
He had tremendous power and influence across all of college athletics. He was on the college basketball selection committee for a time, was head of the BCS for a time. At one time or another, he was also chairman of the NCAA Infractions Appeals Committee, president of the College Commissioners Association and served on the NCAA Management Council.
Yet, you never would have known it.
He will always remain that courtly gentleman sitting at my table on radio row in Hoover, sipping coffee and reading Southern Jewish Life calmly waiting for the next interview.
