HOOVER, Ala. — College football’s best start gathering today in the heart of Dixie for SEC media days.

SEC football has reached an apex entering the seventh year of Commissioner Mike Slive’s tenure.

The conference powered its way to record revenues again last year. It has sent its lessthan-perfect league champions the past two seasons — Florida and LSU — to the BCS national championship game, where they defeated Ohio State to claim the title each time.

The league also welcomes back Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow, the Florida quarterback who last season accounted for 51 touchdowns, led his team in rushing and became the first player to rush and pass for at least 20 touchdowns in the same season. Tebow and the Gators kick off an intriguing first day of interviewing at the Wynfrey Hotel. The first-day slate also includes the national champion LSU Tigers and their fiery fourth-year coach, Les Miles. The conference boasts six coaches who have won a national championship in the past 12 seasons. They include Miles, Florida’s Urban Meyer, Alabama’s Nick Saban, Tennessee’s Phillip Fulmer and South Carolina’s Steve Spurrier. Vanderbilt’s Bobby Johnson also turned the trick at Furman, then a Division I-AA school.

Yet that group doesn’t include Auburn’s Tommy Tuberville, who has a 13-0 season under his belt. Nor does it count Georgia’s Mark Richt, who guided the Bulldogs to the No. 2 final ranking last season and has 51 victories over the past five years.

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It also doesn’t include firstyear Arkansas Coach Bobby Petrino, who steered Louisville to 41 victories in four years and produced a BCS bowl winner for the Cardinals.

The league’s 1-2 finish in The Associated Press poll last season by LSU and Georgia was the first by one conference since Nebraska, Oklahoma and Colorado took the top three spots after the 1971 season for