DALLAS — We’ve finally reached the ultimate stage, years of debate and deliberation behind us and a new era of college football staring back.
And the man who made it all happen isn’t here to enjoy it.
For those trumpeting the elimination of the big, bad SEC from the sport’s biggest stage, understand this: without SEC commissioner Mike Slive, groundbreaking change in the college football postseason doesn’t happen.
So while we celebrate Oregon vs. Ohio State in the first ever championship game of the College Football Playoff, let’s also pause and remember how we got here — and how the man who was the driving force behind unthinkable change is fighting prostate cancer once again.
“A great man,” said CFP executive director Bill Hancock. “A visionary for our wonderful sport.”
It has been nearly eight years since Slive walked into the BCS meetings in South Florida and explained his idea for dramatic change. His home run ball was a four-team playoff; he’d settle for a Plus One — one game after all the bowl games were played.
He might as well have been brokering peace in the Middle East.
Years later, after the Big Ten and Pac-12 finally saw the game’s future landscape outside the optics of the Rose Bowl; after conference realignment left us with five power conferences instead of six and a clear demarcation in the haves and have-nots, the Slive plan has finally come to fruition.
“All of this, all of what we now have in the college football postseason, doesn’t get done without him and his ability to lead,” said one Power 5 athletic director. “The agendas and personalities alone within the conferences should have been enough to kill it.”
Or as former SEC coach Houston Nutt once said after a contentious SEC spring meeting when Slive laid down the law on coaches publicly dressing down each other: “What’s the (E.F. Hutton) commercial? When Mike talks, people listen.”
Want to root for someone Monday night? Root for the 74-year-old commissioner who navigated the sport through the bickering and fighting of finding the right postseason, and is now dealing with his own personal battle.
Last month, after staying out of the public eye for much of the season, Slive showed up at the SEC Championship Game, his beloved season-ending celebration. He sat on a sideline bench during pregame, dressed neatly in a navy blue suit; his body changing from the wear and tear of chemotherapy.
The man who led the SEC to unthinkable heights in more than a decade of service, wasn’t going to miss this moment. Years earlier, he stood on that same sideline celebrating the reunion of the Utica Boys, a group of Slive’s closest friends from his high school football team — the one he led to an unbeaten season as an undersized, gutty quarterback.
They took pictures arm in arm that day, friends who never let the years pass by, who never let the memories fade.
A couple of years after that, the most powerful man in college sports was chasing around his new granddaughter, Abigail, on the Georgia Dome turf. If the Utica Free Academy Days molded Slive, Abigail certainly completed it.
“A lot of great memories here,” Slive said softly that day last month, and then walked out to toss the pre-game coin flip and return to the safety of his skybox.
It’s not that Slive doesn’t want to be in Dallas, he can’t. Chemo suppresses immune systems and leaves those fighting susceptible to dangerous viruses. A common cold could be disastrous; the flu, deadly.
When Slive announced in October that he was fighting cancer again, he said the prognosis was good. He said in December, amid the din of the game he loves, that he was looking forward to spending time with Liz, his bride of 46 years, and moving into an advisory role with the SEC.
His love for college sports is only eclipsed by his love for Liz.
"I still can't believe she married me," Slive said.
The game will arrive Monday night, and at some point, Slive might just walk out onto his back porch that overlooks a rolling scenery in suburban Birmingham — a place he has retreated to often while making critical decisions — and reflect on the bumpy yet rewarding ride from the BCS to the CFP.
Let’s not forget who got us here, everyone.
Let’s not forget to say a prayer, too.