The funniest SEC Media Days moment you can’t watch

This story only happened because Bobby Johnson decided to retire in July.

It’s 2010, his Vanderbilt football team had finished the 2009 season 2-10, and the man, who one year prior led the team to its first bowl win since 1955, chose to hang it up, just weeks before the team was set to start camp.

July 14 is a difficult date to start a coaching search, and Vanderbilt didn’t even technically have an athletic director. And so, the interim tag fell to offensive line coach Robbie Caldwell

“Robbie ... tries to give you that little hayseed act a little bit,” Johnson said of his replacement according to the Associated Press. “He is a really smart guy, and he’ll do a great job.”

His first order of business: SEC Media Days.

The schedule had already been emailed to reporters the day before Johnson’s announcement with the now-retired coach’s name on it. Caldwell walked on stage July 22, ready to field questions from reporters in Hoover, and a bit concerned there wouldn’t be enough to fill his time.

What ensued is perhaps the most memorable moment in the history of conference media days. It also might be the last ‘viral’ college football moment you can’t watch.

‘It was pretty special’

The Caldwell coaching file before and after his single season as Vanderbilt’s head coach is exclusively made up of offensive line jobs. That’s not important here though, what you need to know is that Caldwell, who retired after the 2021 season, is from Pageland, S.C., and it showed at media days.

He took the main room microphone at the Wynfrey Hotel in Hoover wearing a name tag over his suit, just in case the assembled writers were unsure who was on stage. According to the transcript distributed by ASAP Sports afterward, he started slow, cracking a joke about being something of an unknown, then answered 12 run-of-the-mill questions.

It was the 13th question that got the fireworks started, a query about what it was like growing up in Pageland. Caldwell mentioned frog gigging and playing sports, then took off.

“My first hourly paying job was on the turkey farm,” Caldwell said. “I don’t know if I could tell you what my job was, but I was on the inseminating crew.”

It took a few questions, but finally someone in the room circled back on the turkey farm comment and asked Caldwell whether the job impacted his enjoyment of Thanksgiving. It’s here the transcript really shines.

“COACH CALDWELL: (Pulling his jacket out and showing his large stomach.)”

Sounds like a moment that’d make for a great video. Maybe a TikTok that would go immediately viral, or a gif for the elder millennials of the artist formerly known as Twitter to beat into the ground for the next decade.

It’s not a video though. We’ll circle back on that, but first, Caldwell’s answer.

“I knew I was a fat guy, but I didn’t need all these heavy-duty extra springs,” he said. “This job has been good for me, I’ve lost about seven pounds in the last eight days. No, it hasn’t. You can tell by looking at me. I done it all, too. If I told some of these ladies, what they put in that lipstick right there, oh, my goodness, because I debeaked, blood tested, vaccinated. I done it all. It was pretty special.”

He kept going. No, he didn’t feel guilty at Thanksgiving, because domestic turkeys are “the dumbest thing.”

Throughout the press conference, Caldwell created a few more memories, noting someone had tried to give him a $1.50 tip at a restaurant the night before. He also acknowledged there had been a bit of a cultural adjustment for the Nashville academics when he took over.

Eventually, someone asked the real burning question. What exactly does the insemination crew do on a turkey farm?

“It fertilizes the egg so they produce a better turkey in the hatchery,” Caldwell said. “It’s an interesting process. I’d be glad to show you sometime. We get a Tom in here. Actually it’s a process. I probably shouldn’t be saying that in front of y’all, but... Hey, it was a great job. I really appreciated ‘em giving me that. I think the worst part of it was gathering dead turkeys that had been out for a while. That was something. But anyway…”

Caldwell shouldn’t have been concerned about a short session with a performance like that. Eventually, after what was reported to be around 40 minutes, moderator Chuck Dunlap, now the SEC’s director of communications, had to cut it off.

According to multiple reports from the time, Caldwell got an ovation from reporters, something that simply doesn’t happen at SEC Media Days. The assembled scribes then headed for their computers and began typing.

‘Maybe the best ever’

If Caldwell had given a show like his 2010 efforts in 2024, it’d have been posted on a hundred YouTube accounts as soon as the occasionally dodgy media days wifi could render the video. But 14 years ago, things were different.

As it stands, there’s not a complete tape available. The only moving picture of the Caldwell presser comes from a blurry video of his opening statement, posted by Joel Hollingsworth, then of SB Nation’s Rocky Top Talk blog, who filmed it on a Flip Video camcorder per the video’s description.

This reporter was about to start seventh grade at the time, and thus wasn’t especially concerned about tracking down video. It was also the peak of the college football blog era, so those in attendance were more concerned about getting a post up with the good quotes.

AL.com columnist Michael Casagrande was there, covering Alabama for the Decatur Daily. Casagrande is known for his prowess capturing viral video moments, but even he didn’t have the goods this time.

“I can’t imagine I’d have any surviving recording,” he said. “Wasn’t using my phone to record yet.”

Given that the iPhone hadn’t fully taken over the world yet, and the fact that tweeting video wasn’t even an option yet, most weren’t. TV cameras aren’t allowed in the main room either, and one Birmingham-area television sports reporter said their station didn’t have a Caldwell video in the archive.

Even a media days cult hero, Bob Holt of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, said he hadn’t seen a tape, though he recalled it well.

“That was a hilarious session,” Holt said in an email. “Maybe the best ever.”

Jeff Lockridge was on the Vanderbilt beat for the Tennessean at the time. Now working outside of journalism, he agreed with Holt’s assessment.

“I recall attempting to take notes on my laptop while laughing my butt off during Robbie’s ‘Downhome Southern Tales from the Farm.’” Lockridge told AL.com. “It felt like we were at a Jeff Foxworthy standup special.”

Lockridge wasn’t filming either. He said it was unlikely the Tennessean had anybody shooting video at the event that year, and a current employee of the USA Today Network told AL.com no Caldwell tape exists in the company’s digital archive.

With Hollingsworth either not seeing or not responding to messages from AL.com, it was time to turn to official sources.

‘Not that I am aware’

It’s possible that the Caldwell media days presser is college football’s last word-of-mouth legend. The session is recalled at dinner by those in attendance, and lives on in newspapers and blog posts from the time.

Holly Anderson, then of Everyday Should Be Saturday, advised readers at the time to try and track down tape.

“If you can find video of any of this online, do it,” Anderson wrote shortly after Caldwell left the microphone.

Whether one ever existed seems questionable. Vanderbilt appears to have posted a video on its website at some point, but it’s gone now, and according to VU director of football communications Mike Scholl, it disappeared.

And even back in 2010, it’s possible the footage had been chopped up like a Butterball on Thanksgiving Day.

“Asked around to a few people, including one of our video guys who goes back to that time, and it appears our footage has also been lost to history,” Scholl said in an email “Candidly, he was pretty sure that even when we posted the press conference at the time, we cut out the part that would make it valuable today, for lack of a better term.”

But surely the SEC, the conference that craves discussion surrounding its media days event, which will be held in Dallas this year, has a copy. Perhaps one it would share with the world.

Or perhaps not.

“Not that I am aware,” Dunlap said via email when asked if the league had a video it could pass along.

2010 was a different television world. The SEC Network didn’t exist yet, and ESPN certainly wasn’t emphasizing a digital audience, airing media days on ESPNU.

The worldwide leader keeps extensive archives, and likely maintains a copy of the Caldwell tape. However, it hasn’t posted the video anywhere at time of writing.

AL.com reached out to ESPN about the press conference video, but received ill tidings. The network charges $6,000 per 30 seconds of footage.

If the 40-minute estimate is right, that’s approximately $480,000. While AL.com is happy to invest in its video product, the legend of Robbie Caldwell will continue to live in the written word for now.

Even if the entire editorial staff went to work, that’s too many hours on the turkey farm.