SEC MEDIA DAY

Southeastern Conference media days opened with a bit of a redemption tour. The Arkansas Razorbacks didn’t finish how they wanted last season and Tennessee couldn’t finish where many expected. LSU coach Ed Orgeron, meanwhile, is simply embracing his second chance as an SEC head coach after failing the first time around.

HOOVER, Ala.—Southeastern Conference Commissioner Greg Sankey opened football media days talking about integration of sports in the league and the upcoming 50th anniversary of that moment.

Sankey talked at length Monday about Nate Northington’s debut on Sept. 30, 1967, for Kentucky against Mississippi. The commissioner gave a history lesson on the timeline of integration in the league, including when Northington, then a sophomore, becoming the first African-American to play in a varsity SEC football game.

Sankey said by playing in a football game, “Nate Northington affected us all.”

The commissioner did talk about other issues, including scheduling, recruiting and instant replay. But he devoted a lot of his time talking about integration.

There were four black football players on that Wildcats team: Northington, Greg Page, Wilbur Hackett and Houston Hogg.

Page, Northington’s roommate, died the day before the game from a neck injury sustained during a preseason practice. They were the SEC’s first black scholarship football players.

Kentucky has erected bronze statues of all four players. Sankey said the SEC has invited Northington, Hackett, Hogg and Page’s family to the league championship game in December “to join us in remembering, honoring and celebrating what they helped change 50 years ago.”

Hackett went on to become the SEC’s first black team captain in any sport.