HOOVER, Ala. -- The SEC never puts a number on its Football Kickoff Media Days.

For instance, this year’s four-day circus that began Monday here at the Wynfrey Hyatt is simply billed as SEC 2019 Football Kickoff Media Days.

Actually, it’s the 35th annual SEC Football Kickoff Media Days.

When you’ve attended all of them like I have, covering for six different media outlets through the years, you put a number on it.

That’s right, all 35.

Yes, I came over on the Mayflower in 1985, docked at the Holiday Inn Medical Center in Birmingham with about 60 other media settlers and wandered into a room where there were 10 round tables for the league’s then-10 football coaches.

Media could practically have one-on-one conversations and interviews.

It was a mind-blowing concept considering I’m now joined by 14 coaches, 42 players, more than 1,000 of my closest media buddies, an ESPN network and almost 40 radio sports talk shows that babble from sunrise to beyond sunset.

And there’s a pack of autographing seeking fans that triples in size when Alabama and Nick Saban’s Mardi Gras parade rolls through the Wynfrey lobby as it did Wednesday morning.

Media Days were born as a transition from the SEC Skywriters tour, a 19-year annual August endeavor from 1965 to 1983. It was 45 or so hard-working and partying journalists with hearts of gold and livers of bronze stuffed in a Southern Airways DC-3 propeller plane for a day-to-day tour of the then-10 league schools.

By day, writers went to practice, had time to interview head coaches and players in a relaxed atmosphere. By night, every SEC school usually hosted a dinner party with free food and drink that lasted well in the wee hours of the morning.

Among those who didn’t mind having a good time was the plane’s pilot, who was nicknamed “Crash.”

“The night before the start of the tour in Birmingham, most of us were playing cards and drinking into 2 or 3 in the morning,” former Baton Rouge Advocate sports editor Mike McKenzie once told me. “And there’s this guy with us all night, just laughing and having a great time. We didn’t know who he was, and nobody asked him.

“We board the plane the next morning and that guy is already there. He’s the PILOT!”

Former Nashville Tennessean writer Jimmy Davy told me Crash’s record as the Skywriters’ pilot was flawless, even though Crash was sometimes as under the weather as the writers after all-nighters.

“Crash often left his cabin door open, so we could see right into the cockpit,” Davy said. “One morning, we’re all getting on the plane in Oxford and we look up in the cockpit. There’s Crash laid back in his seat wearing an oxygen mask.”

After the Skywriters’ 1983 tour, the decision was made to end it when the SEC couldn’t get enough media members to fill a plane for a 1984 tour, which happened to be scheduled the same time as the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

A year later, the SEC started its current preseason media days (copying an idea of the Big Ten Conference), which is when I started.

There have been some strange and memorable moments at the five Media Days locales, four in Birmingham/Hoover and last year at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta.

One year, players and media bonded when there happened to be Hawaiian Tropic regional beauty contest in the hotel where media days were hosted.

That night, all rivalries were put aside for the sake of raging hormones.

There was the year that Saban, as LSU’s coach, brought his dog to the Wynfrey and left it in his hotel room while he went down to tend to his media responsibilities.

Somehow, the dog escaped Saban’s room, made his way downstairs and found his owner.

In 2004, then-Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer cancelled his Media Day appearance because of concerns he would be served a subpoena in a libel suit filed against the NCAA by former University of Alabama assistant football coaches Ronnie Cottrell and Ivy Williams.

So, he phoned in to Media Days on a speaker phone that was placed at the front of the print media area. The bizarre part was the battery of photographers surrounded the speaker phone and clicked off pictures like a pack of frenzied paparazzi.

It’s always interesting to watch first-year coaches in their Media Day debuts.

In 2002, first-year Florida coach Ron Zook talked so fast and so non-stop I thought his head might explode. The next year in 2003, new Alabama coach Mike Shula looked like a deer-in-headlights, and as it turned out he coached that way in his four years on the job.

The biggest Media Day hit as a first-year coach was Vanderbilt’s Robbie Caldwell in 2010.

He lasted just one season at Vandy winning just two games. But he won SEC Media Day when he talked about his first job.

“My first hourly paying job was on the turkey farm,” Caldwell said. “I don't know if I could tell you what my job was, but I was on the inseminating crew. That's a fact. I worked my way to the top.”

Since 1989 when the league began inviting players in Media Days, we’ve been privy to interview future Pro Football Hall of Famers and other assorted characters. One of my favorite Media Days players, Georgia defensive tackle Bill Goldberg, was in the first class invited in ’89.

Yes, that Goldberg, the pro wrestler turned actor.

The dynamic of Media Days changed when the SEC Network began televising it in 2015 and actually put sportswriters on camera asking questions.

It forced sportswriters to improve their wardrobe, and not just wear the latest freebie shirt they received from a bowl trip.

So, after 74 coaches and 900 players through 35 Media Days, I’m looking forward to next year’s 36th annual.

Who’s counting?

I am.