At face value, the man who was introduced Tuesday as new commissioner of the Southeastern Conference is unlike his predecessor in the job, as a lawyer who enjoys big cities and fine cigars. Friends say Mike Slive seemed perfectly content to retire in Chicago, where his office reflects his appreciation for museums and other urban treasures.

"There's some sports stuff in there," said Brian Teter, Slive's assistant commissioner at Conference USA. "But there are a lot of really nice paintings, too. He loves sports, but he's got a lot of balance in his life."

	Mike Slive knows what's at stake financially for the SEC, so don't expect any sudden moves.

Slive grew up in New York and attended Dartmouth. He currently runs a league known more for basketball than football. Teter highly doubts that Slive will attend two games each Saturday during football season, as was the habit of Roy Kramer, the old coach-turned-commissioner.

But peel back the layers on Slive, and it becomes clear the similarities between he and Kramer are more distinct than the differences. This will come as some relief to the SEC football coaches and athletics directors, who had feared that the SEC school presidents, weary from scandal, might install a reform-minded zealot.

In Slive, the presidents may still get their desired emphasis on academics and NCAA rules integrity. He has the capacity, and the charge. But his greatest achievements are in other areas.

"Everyone is excited with the appointment of Mike Slive," Arkansas AD Frank Broyles said.

Like Kramer, Slive is a proven empire-builder. In fact, if anyone in college sports has pursued commercial interests as aggressively as Kramer during the past decade, it's Slive, who created Conference USA and shaped it into a respectable, albeit second-tier league.

Football was his tool. The sport was a weakling at most of his schools when the conference began play in 1996, with just six members and one bowl tie-in. But like a blackjack player calling for more cards, Slive kept adding teams -- four in the past five years from schools as far away as New York (Army) and Texas (Texas Christian) -- until he cobbled together a winning hand.

Next season, five bowl games have agreed to take C-USA teams. The league also is in the second year of an eight-year deal with ESPN, which, due to Slive's desire to gain exposure for his teams, is permitted to televise some games on Tuesday and Friday nights. He checked off on those once-sacred nights over the howls of critics and the national high school community, which thought it owned Fridays.

"He's done a great job of holding together a disparate set of schools," said Kevin Weiberg, Big 12 commissioner. "He knows the business."

Just as important, Slive knows the NCAA's business. Considered a friend and ally of Kramer, he has served on various influential boards inside and outside the NCAA's formal structure, most notably as chair of the NCAA Infractions Appeals Committee the past nine years. That's the group that will hear appeals by Kentucky and Alabama later this summer.

Slive said Tuesday he has recused himself from deliberations in those cases, for conflict of interest. But, he said, that will not stop him from advising the Wildcats and Crimson Tide on how to prepare their cases before his committee. How valuable is that? Imagine the other SEC commissioner, Wall Street's Harvey Pitt, stepping aside momentarily to help WorldCom beat fraud charges made by his staff.

Take note: In the history of Conference USA, only one team -- Louisville men's basketball -- has been hit with a postseason ban for NCAA violations. That ban was vacated in 1999 when it was appealed to Slive's five-member committee, which, of course, considered the matter without the recused Slive.

John Shumaker, then the president at Louisville, now serves in the same capacity at Tenneseee. He started June 5.

"John is one of those who will take the credit for (hiring) Mike Slive," said John A. White, University of Arkansas chancellor and head of the SEC presidents group. "Some will say that when John came to the SEC, Mike was the player to be named later."

Not that the SEC has done poorly before Slive's committee. It's 2-for-3, better than most. Sanctions against Ole Miss football in 1994 were upheld. But Alabama football got relief a year later when scholarship cuts were significantly reduced by the appeals committee, in a case Slive was recused from because of his relationship with a law firm that represents schools in NCAA infractions cases (he co-founded the firm). He did chair the committee when, on the eve of the 1999 SEC basketball tournament, it shot down a postseason ban handed out to LSU for recruiting violations in the Lester Earl case.

If nothing else, Slive might be able to help SEC schools get in and out of scandals with as little damage as possible.

"To the extent that we, like other conferences, have allegations and violations of NCAA rules, the challenge is to put them behind us and avoid similar problems in the future," he said.

The SEC presidents have agreed to explore new ways of doing that. But Slive isn't sure that the conference should create a mechanism that would investigate and penalize schools that break the rules -- as suggested for consideration by Robert Khayat, the Mississippi chancellor and outgoing SEC president. The Pac-10 is the only conference that uses such a format, and wasn't big on the idea. Slive noted that he chose not to create such a system when he started up Conference USA

"You don't want to be a prosecutor," Slive said. "My goal is to work with the institutions when these issues come up. Be helpful, be responsive."

In his introductory remarks to the media, Slive often sounded much like Kramer, minus the Southern accent. He expressed a deep appreciation of the financial powerhouse that Kramer built the SEC into, the "foundation that will allow us" to improve on graduation rates and rules compliance.

A district court judge in New Hampshire in the 1970s, he will tread carefully before trying to rearrange any of Kramer's furniture.

"Mike's brilliance is that he never jumps to conclusions," Teter said. "He'll get all the information before he attacks anything. That's where his legal background comes in."

Slive is keenly aware of the place of the SEC in the college sports power grid. After years of watching largely from the outside in, as commissioner of a lesser league like C-USA, he will soon run a conference that distributed a record $95 million in revenues to its members last year.

That sense of what's at stake for the SEC is why fans also should not expect the hiring of Slive to mark a shift away from the Bowl Championship Series, and in the direction of a football playoff. Presently, the BCS -- Kramer's brainchild -- is what suffices for a national championship, to the frustration of schools such as C-USA's own Tulane, which went undefeated in 1998 but was denied the chance to play in one of the leading bowls.

"I think Mike will have an appreciation for the value of the bowl system," said Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, confidently.

After all, Slive's a learned man.

Tom Farrey is a senior writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at tom.farrey@espn.com.