Man of Action: Mike Slive eyes looming developments

Notes from Mike Slive's Q&A session

• The simplest way to explain 'autonomy' is to say that 65 institutions represented by five conferences want the ability to put student-athlete well-being at its core and at its focus and use that philosophy as the foundation for the enactment of legislation — rather than having various institutions' self-interest at the core.

• I don't consider playing nine games 'moving ahead.' It's playing nine games. There's no advantage inherent in it that makes anybody better because they play nine games. We think about schedule strength in terms of 12 games. Two-thirds of your strength of schedule are your conference games. We believe, with the depth and strength of our league, that we have a unique strength of schedule for two thirds of our schedule.

What about the other third? We said, 'Ok, we've got four schools already playing nine games.' Florida-Florida State, Georgia-Georgia Tech, Clemson-South Carolina, Louisville-Kentucky. Now we're going to make sure the rest of our league plays, for lack of a better term, nine games. Our teams are playing Notre Dame, Michigan, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, that's just some of them. If you're going to measure our league by the number of games we play, we play nine games.

• On the SEC Network, with AT&T U-Verse — and this is a point to be emphasized — and with Dish, the SEC Network is available to everyone. The SEC Network, right now, is available to everyone. Now, that would mean for some who don't have AT&T U-Verse or Dish, you have to change providers. For those of you who would prefer not to change providers, we are in serious conversations with most all providers and I can assure you there isn't anybody in this room who has a provider we aren't in serious conversation with.

• I desire scholarships based on full cost of attendance, that issues related to health and safety have been implemented, that those who are uniquely talented have a way to get timely and important information about their future in a way they can't now. I'd like to see parents come to our campuses on official visits so they can understand the decision their child has to make. I'd like to see parents at bowl games, if they can't afford it we can help them. We were fussing around with silly rules on meals and we've got that fixed now. The bottom line is putting the student-athlete and his or her interests at the forefront.

• The best teams should be in the four-game playoff. Auburn was 13-0 in 2004 and that's when we started thinking and talking about this. While we were trying to do it we went ahead and won seven straight national championships, so people were like, 'What are you doing?' But four spots is better than two spots. It took us a year to do it, it's something you folks have wanted, something the fans have wanted. Things are evolutionary. The only constant in life is change. All these things indicate progress that is important to the game.