Arkansas athletic director Frank Broyles will be attending his final SEC spring meetings at Destin, Fla., this week. And if it were up to the SEC, I'm sure he would receive a royal goodbye.

But in deference to Broyles, the league likely will low-key the event. Broyles, who will retire at the end of 2007, won't want to make a big deal of it.

His career is one of the biggest deals in college football history. He has been a star quarterback, a successful coach and administrator, and an outstanding TV football analyst.

He's also connected to some of the biggest names in sports.

He played quarterback for Bobby Dodd at Georgia Tech. He coached Lance Alworth. He was Darrell Royal's biggest rival. He hired Lou Holtz, Eddie Sutton and Nolan Richardson. He was the color analyst for legendary play-by-play announcer Keith Jackson for eight years on ABC. He's a member of the Augusta National Golf Club.

He was the SEC football player of the year in 1944 and held the Orange Bowl record for single-game passing yardage (304) until Tom Brady broke it in 2000.

He didn't just excel in football. He was second-team, All-SEC for three consecutive years in basketball and still had time to letter in baseball as well.

As a coach, he won 145 games and seven Southwest Conference championships in 19 years at Arkansas. In his 30-plus years as Arkansas' athletic director, the Razorbacks have won more than 40 national championships and 100 conference championships in the SEC and SWC.

Broyles already has been inducted into eight sports hall of fames. The Broyles Award, given annually to the nation's top Division I-A assistant football coach, was established in his honor in 1996.

Machen Waves: Florida president Bernie Machen could play a starring role at the meetings. Hopefully, he will have a receptive audience.

Last December, before the Gators qualified for the BCS national championship game, Machen made it clear that college football needed a championship playoff. The meetings will give him a forum, as well as an opportunity to gain support from the rest of the conference presidents.

How could they say no? The SEC is the nation's strongest, most balanced conference. A playoff will assure its best team of a chance to play for the national title. The BCS offers no such assurance.

Think how dominant Florida was in beating Ohio State for the national title in January. And think how close it came to not even qualifying for the game.

Comeback Guys: Georgia's Andy Landers is no longer the only man standing in SEC women's basketball. Three of the league's four new coaches are men: Tom Collen at Arkansas, Van Chancellor at LSU, and former Tennessee assistant Matthew Mitchell at Kentucky.

That signals a dramatic turnaround in a sport where men have found it increasingly difficult to get head coaching jobs. It should be easier after what happened at Ole Miss and Kentucky.

Ole Miss coach Carol Ross and Kentucky coach Mickie DeMoss resigned after successful, though brief, four-year runs as head coaches.

"I just need some time to myself," DeMoss said.

Ross said she was a "sprinter in a marathon race."

Translation: Both coaches buckled under the demands of the job.

Something every athletic director should ask himself: When's the last time a male coach complained of burnout after four years?

Division Of Power: The strongest division in college football isn't the SEC West or East. It's the Sexton Division.

Nick Saban's return to the SEC made it even stronger.

Saban, Alabama's new football coach, is another wealthy client of sports agent Jimmy Sexton, a University of Tennessee alum whose SEC power base keeps expanding. Other SEC football coaches in the Sexton stable: UT's Phillip Fulmer, South Carolina's Steve Spurrier, Auburn's Tommy Tuberville and Arkansas' Houston Nutt.

Saban, Fulmer and Spurrier have won national championships. Tuberville led Auburn to a 13-0 season in 2004.

Sports editor John Adams may be reached at 865-342-6284 or adamsj@knews.com.