Bill Stewart looks around the conference and makes note of three things:

1) Two schools, maybe four — depending on your definition of the upcoming word — have veteran quarterbacks.
2) Three head coaches were defensive head coaches/assistants in the NFL and in college.
3) Three new head coaches will begin with a focus defense.

Guess what direction he believes the conference will head into this season.

“I’m not going to apologize for winning football games with no flair,” Stewart said. “What they’ve hired me to do is win football games. If we’ve got an offense that can put points up on the board, we’re sure going to try that, believe me. But when everyone is doing the same things on offense, it’s easier to stop because you see it every day. So why would you do that? You have to change and there’s nothing wrong with that. 

“People want to see the spread offense go up and down the field and score all these points, but that’s not happening. We’ve seen that stuff and practiced against that stuff so now we’ve gotten to where the players understand it, the coaches understand it and we may go back a little bit to the more conservative, defensive kind of game you used to see. Look at Alabama. Worked for them, didn’t it?”