The crown jewel of college football’s talkin’ season will be staged in Tampa next summer. The SEC announced Tuesday that its 2026 Kickoff Media Days, a four-day preseason football event featuring every league coach and top players from each program, will be held July 20-23 at the JW Marriott Tampa Water Street hotel.
The crown jewel of college football’s talkin’ season will be staged in Tampa next summer.
The SEC announced Tuesday that its 2026 Kickoff Media Days, a four-day preseason football event featuring every league coach and top players from each program, will be held July 20-23 at the JW Marriott Tampa Water Street hotel.
It will mark the first time the event will be staged in Florida in its 42-year history.
The announcement represents the final coup of Rob Higgins’ uber-prosperous tenure as Tampa Bay Sports Commission executive director. Higgins, whose group has helped the bay area land a smorgasbord of national and global sporting events — from the Super Bowl to March Madness to WrestleMania to College Football Playoff title games — was formally introduced as USF’s CEO of Athletics last week.
The event, which draws hundreds of media members annually, serves as the de facto launch of the college football season each year. It was held in Birmingham — then nearby Hoover, Alabama — for nearly three decades, but has since been staged in metropolitan areas such as Atlanta, Nashville and Dallas.
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Category: General Sports
