Before the creation of SEC football media days, there were the Skywriters

It will all be neatly packaged, like shuffling through a cafeteria line hoping everything isn't warmed over and stale.

Would you like some sound bites, sir? We'll let you ask a question if there's any left. Here's a funny anecdote - wait, it's already gone, taken by that big bully ESPN.

Welcome to annual SEC football media days, which start Monday at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta.

For four days - now expanded because 14 coaches and 42 players stuffed into three days caused many media members to suffer cliche overdose by day two - 1,300-plus of my closest friends and I will try to extract some info that will interest fans and educate us to correctly predict the league champion.

Back in 1985 at the first SEC media days at Birmingham's Holiday Inn Medical Center, there probably weren't more than 70 media members.

I should know. I was there.

It was quaint, almost informal. But to the writers back then who had experienced the league's Skywriters tour, even the first media day seemed a bit too stuffy and organized.

Before the start of this continually growing monster known as SEC media days, 45 or so hard-working and partying journalists with hearts of gold and livers of bronze stuffed into a DC-3 propeller plane for a day-to-day tour of the then-10 league schools.

The late Scoop Hudgins, the SEC's media director, created the Skywriters in 1965 because the Southwest Conference had a similar tour. Once the SEC Skywriters got rolling - it cost each writer just $300 for airfare covering the entire trip - the Skywriters' legendary reputation spread throughout the league.

"These were a bunch of professionals who had a good 'ol time doing their jobs, but they also formed professional and personal relationships with the coaches of all 10 schools, because they got to spend a day at each campus," said Steve Townsend, who was an assistant under Hudgins and who eventually succeeded him as the SEC's media director. "By being allowed to go to practice, by having a lot of time to interview the coach and players in a relaxed atmosphere, the Skywriters really got a good feel for what was going on at each school."

Coaches who didn't mind having a post-preseason practice libation or three looked forward to the Skywriters' visits. Alabama coach Bear Bryant would sit on the back porch of his house, entertaining writers and answering questions. Ole Miss coach Johnny Vaught did the same at a local Oxford hotel. Florida coach Charlie Pell invited the Skywriters to a pool party at his house.

"The beauty of the tour was each school rolled out the red carpet of access," recalled Mike McKenzie, who worked for several Southern newspapers. "You could go get a story, you could get isolated one-on-one on a field with a story subject. That was back in the day when coaches trusted writers."

Retired Birmingham newspaper writer Bill Lumpkin said coaches went out of their way to accommodate the Skywriters.

"One year at Ole Miss, I go into (Coach Billy) Kinard's office and I tell him I need to talk to all the Alabama players on his roster," Lumpkin said. "He takes me into a team meeting and says, 'All my players from Alabama raise your hand.'

"They raise their hand. Kinard says, "Introduce yourselves to Mr. Lumpkin and talk to him.' He turns to me and says, 'Is that all you need? See you later.' "

Every SEC school usually hosted a dinner party with free food and drink that lasted well in the wee hours of morning, with endless card games and other escapades that somehow didn't end up on the police blotter or lead to the hospital emergency room.

"One night at Auburn, a writer has a little too good of a time and he passes out right after a dinner," said the late Jimmy Davy, a retired Nashville Tennessean writer. "We take him from his seat and stretch him out on another table while somebody goes to get the doctor.

"The doctor doesn't show up in a timely fashion, and this writer is still unconscious. Somebody says, 'We need to get some ice or a cold towel to put on his face.'

"We couldn't find a towel, but on this banquet table was this huge bowl of sliced cucumbers that had been on ice. So we decide as a group that we're going to take all these ice-cold cucumber slices and put them on this guy's face.

"So when the doctor finally shows up and takes a look at this guy with all those cucumbers on his face, he says, 'Which one of you guys is the witch doctor?' "

Among those who didn't mind having a good time was the plane's Southern Airways pilot, who was nicknamed "Crash" by late Gainesville (Fla.) Sun sports editor Jack Hairston.

"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," McKenzie said. "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!"

Davy said Crash's record as the Skywriters' pilot was flawless, even though Crash was sometimes as under the weather as the writers after an all-nighter.

"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."

For any rookie media member making his first trip with the Skywriters, it was an eye-opening experience, especially when Hairston took over the plane's in-cabin announcements starting on day one.

"Every year just before we took off on the first flight of the tour," Townsend said, "Jack would grab the microphone and start reading a list he researched of plane crashes from the previous year."

Rookies were made to carry the luggage of the veteran writers, and those who didn't comply suffered the consequences.

"I was a good rookie, but David Lamm from Jacksonville was an uncooperative, obstinate rookie," said Phillip Marshall, who went on his first Skywriters tour in 1977 as a reporter for the Decatur (Ala.) Daily and who's now a senior writer for the Auburn athletic department website. "He refused to load the luggage of the veterans. So one time the plane just happened to take off without his luggage. It was left sitting on the runway."

Marshall said halfway through his first Skywriters tour, after several days of writing, partying and plane trips, he thought he was "going to die."

"You're getting on this old airplane that sat outside all day and its air conditioner doesn't start until you get in the air," Marshall said. "A lot of guys got on that plane every day not feeling well from the previous night."

The SEC's Hudgins, all of 5-foot-5 of him, did his best to keep the writers in line. He once tried to institute roll calls and assign seats on buses to assure no media members got left behind at campuses heading to airports, but that fell on deaf ears.

"Like someone once said of Scoop, if he was in charge of the Mafia, they would have called it disorganized crime," Townsend said. "There was no strict schedule under Scoop."

Finally, after the Skywriters' 1983 tour, the decision was made to end it when the league couldn't get enough media members to fill a plane for a 1984 tour, which was 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). The DC-3 and Crash the Pilot were sidelined forever.

Some Skywriters are deceased, many are retired and a few are still working, such as Marshall. But the memories live on.

"You will never have anything again like the Skywriters," Townsend said.

Darn it. Or thank God. It just depends where you're sitting.