Alabama sports reporters and cameramen took part in the first Southeastern Conference Skywriters Tour in 1966. The Skywriters Tour, which continued until 1983, was how the SEC helped preview the upcoming football season until an organized media day event was established in Birmingham in 1985. (Photo courtesy of Phillip Marshall, auburn.247sports.com)

Way back in the Dark Ages of college football –  the days before sports talk radio, Twitter and 24/7 on ESPNU –  a large group of coaches, players and media gathering in one place every year to discuss the upcoming Southeastern Conference season would have been as inconceivable as “Bear” Bryant wearing orange and blue.

Radio row is one of the elements of growth of SEC Football Media Days. (Jimmy Creed/Alabama NewsCenter)

In those years when the SEC had 10 teams, no divisions and no one had to wonder how Missouri and Texas A&M could technically count as “Southeastern” schools, covering the coming fall frenzy was a fairly simple matter. A handful of newspaper, TV and radio station reporters in each state converged piecemeal on their respective schools, wrote or broadcast their stories in similar fashion, and waited for the first kickoff.

Fast forward several decades to the 2015 SEC Football Media Days taking place this week at the Hyatt Regency Birmingham-The Wynfrey Hotel in Hoover and all you can say is … wow! Now a national event with well over 1,000 credentialed media members in attendance, for four days each July this is the center of the college football universe.

“I will call it one of the biggest sports media events in the country year round,” SEC Director of Communications Craig Pinkerton said. “The only other one I would compare it to would be the Super Bowl’s media day.”

The SEC held its first centralized football media days in Birmingham in 1985 and has done so at various locales around the city ever since, but the event’s roots trace even deeper, back to 1966 and something called the Skywriters Tour.

Crimson Tide fans gather at 2015 SEC Media Days in Hoover. (Nik Layman/Alabama NewsCenter)

That year and every year through 1983, the legendary and late SEC publicist Elmore “Scoop” Hudgins chartered an aging plane – one said to be flown by a pilot named “Crash” – and over the course of nine days whisked 40 to 50 newspaper reporters and cameramen around the SEC.

Phillip Marshall, senior editor for Auburn Undercover at auburn.247sports.com, actually participated in the Skywriters Tour, and he reminisced about it earlier this week.

“At each (school), we were treated like traveling royalty,” Marshall said. “They’d even give us a police escort from the airport to the hotel. The head coach almost always showed up in the hospitality room at night. It was a different day.”

The flights were grounded in 1984, but after a one-year hiatus the event found a permanent home in the Magic City. It has been held in four locations around the city since, but it was when it returned to The Wynfrey Hotel for the second time in 2001 that it began to blossom into what it is now, something between a camp revival and a rock concert.

Nowadays, rabid fans skip work to fill The Wynfrey lobby in hopes of getting an autograph from their team’s coach as he enters the building, often with entourage in tow. And the aforementioned throngs of media members gather to hear those coaches and a few players preach the gospel of the upcoming season.

Randy Kennedy, left, co-host of The Sports Drive on WNSP 105.5 FM in Mobile, interviews SEC Network College Football Analyst Tony Barnhart during activities at the 2015 SEC Football Media Days on Tuesday. WNSP is one of 36 sports talk radio stations from across the country broadcasting live from Radio Row this year. (Jimmy Creed/Alabama NewsCenter)

Kevin Scarbinsky, sports columnist for The Birmingham News and al.com, covered the first SEC Media Days in 1985 and all but one since, and he remembers the time before three dozen or so sports talk radio stations lined Radio Row, blogs and the SEC Network.

“I remember one year setting up a one-on-one interview here with Vince Dooley when he was still the coach at Georgia,” Scarbinsky said. “It’s different now because there is such a crush of media members that you just don’t get the time to have those personal conversations with coaches.”

Scarbinsky noted that University of Alabama coaches “have always kind of been the stars of the show” because there are more Tide fans in Birmingham than for any other school. But even he noticed the extra crackle in the air when Nick Saban attended for the first time in 2007.

“I still remember him coming up that escalator that first time, and there was something different then,” Scarbinsky said. “It went to another level then, and it’s only continued to escalate since.”

SEC Football Media Days in Hoover have become as much a fan event as a media one. (Nik Layman/Alabama NewsCenter)

It’s a level of success at which the SEC, the city of Hoover and the entire state of Alabama can smile broadly, and one a lot of people will continue to work very hard to maintain for years to come.

“Everybody that’s actually involved in this takes a great sense of pride in having this event located in our area,” said The Wynfrey Sales Manager Velda Walker-Johnson, who is working her 13th SEC Media Days this week. “We have support from the city, from the (Riverchase Galleria) Mall, all types of local support because people are really excited about it and see as it is one of the premier events of the football season.

“College football season doesn’t kick off until September, but it truly starts with SEC Football Media Days.”

Former Alabama quarterback Jay Barker and now a member of the media at WJOX-FM 94.5 in Birmingham, signs autographs for fans at 2015 SEC Football Media Days in Hoover. (Nik Layman/Alabama NewsCenter)