HOOVER, Ala. — Pardon me while I ramble on.

I mean, SEC Commissioner Mike Slive on Monday quoted from the book of Muhammad Ali, Nelson Mandela, Dwight Eisenhower and Sir Winston Churchill before working in the obligatory Booger McFarland reference.

There was also a Duck Commander/Dynasty reference as SEC Media Days — now expanded to four, count ’em, four days — opened here amid much pomp and a scattering of circumstance.

Booger, the gregarious and delightfully chatty former LSU defensive tackle, may end the big star by week’s end, perhaps even an historical figure.

The Booger and his insight will be joining the SEC Network, for which he should be a natural, and you get the feeling that’s what this week’s dog and pony show is really all about anyway.

Not Booger per se, although Slive’s natural professorial countenance seemed to delight just in repeating the name.

Tim Tebow, who as a player once owned Media Days like a rock star (while defending his choice of abstinence) will also be on the fledgling network, as part of the pregame show.

So, no, it’s not all Booger Week in the SEC.

But you get the feeling that the week, this year, is all about promoting the SEC Network at every opportunity.

“This is commercial,” Slive admitted at one point of his state of the SEC speech. “I strongly urge anyone … to visit getSECnetwork.com”

This shindig has become the de facto “kickoff” for college football, although it seems to get more and more premature since the season itself is still a month and a half away from actually putting a toe to pigskin.

A month from Slive’s Monday talk the SEC Network will debut — no word yet if Suddenlink will have it locally — a fact hard to miss in the Hyatt Regency/Wynfree Hotel.

They haven’t even really hauled out the heavy artillery yet. That will come Wednesday when the blitz goes wall to wall.

Media Days has an extra day this year, mainly, to allow the network equal billing with the 14 head coaches and 42 players jetted in.

The SEC Network gets the stage to itself Wednesday morning on the odd chance somebody missed the news that it will surely revolutionize they way we watch college sports. They will even have a “movie night” Wednesday night to show off their new electronic gizmos to the media throng.

Stay tuned.

But Slive did have some other things on his mind.

Mainly believe this: Autonomy for the power conferences is coming, one way or the other.

Slive may or may not be the most powerful man in college sports — OK, he is ­— but he knows his voice carries weight and he is used to getting what he wants. He went fairly ballistic a few years ago for the need for a four-team playoff, even while most of the power players were still feigning disinterest.

College football’s big boys will have their first true playoff this season.

Before long — book it ­­— an even more exclusive group will have their own rules, the key point being the long-discussed “full cost of scholarship” to put spending money in the pockets of the money-makers, the players.

“We, along with our colleagues from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac 12, developed this new vision for the 21st Century,” Slive said.

“The first item on the agenda would be the full cost of attendance — that’s clear. Then we’ll build from there.”

His “greater autonomy for the SEC and other four conferences” will be the main topic on the agenda, and will be voted on, when the NCAA’s Division I board of directors meets on Aug. 7.

“So we will know soon,” Slive said.

Slive seemed confident the “power conferences” will get what they want.

But, just in case, he did fire this year’s shot across the bow

“If we do not achieve a positive outcome under the existing big tent of Division I,” he said, “we will need to consider the establishment of a venue with similar conferences and institutions where we can enact the desired changes.”

By “venue” we must assume he means their own playpen where they will take their toys and go home and not mingle with, or share as much of the pie with, the riff-raff.

Slive never mentioned the term “Division IV,” but everybody knows it (a complete breakaway) is out there, always an option.(MGNonline)