Yes, the SEC is the best conference in college football and the rest of the nation hates them a little bit because of that fact. Hate is a honorific here.
The SEC football community resides in a part of the United States that considers themselves exceptional beyond the rest of us. Combine this fact with their powerful football prowess and the hatred just naturally flows down south like sediment along the mighty Mississippi River.
Take a look at the SEC map above. Now gaze upon the map of the Confederate States of America 1861-1865.
Then, just for fun, let’s look at the map of Zaxby’s fried chicken locations.
Because after all, Big Fast Food Fried Chicken and college football are inter-twined these days (Popeyes Bahamas Bowl, Zaxby’s Heart of Dallas Bowl, Chick-Fil-A sponsoring every single other college football thing).
This is all more than just coincidence. The loudest national college football pundits regurgitate to use, every postseason, how the bowl system is just the SEC versus the rest of the country.
It should be that way, as SEC football has won 43 national titles in college football, including every single one from 2006-2012..
“They hate us cuz they ain’t us” is one component of the SEC football backlash.
Their football hegemony is partnered with the sports media hegemony of ESPN. The marriage bed of Bristol and the SEC is about as in your face as it gets.
When the SEC Network came along, ESPN’s obnoxious SEC football bias ramped up even further.
If SEC football fans didn’t already tell you that the SEC is the greatest, SEC football media will.
There’s a lot more going on with this SEC football hatred thing than just jealousy. One of the greatest writers in American history, Southern scribe William Faulkner, once said “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.”
You need no further validation of Faulkner’s saying than the fact that the Confederate Flag is still somehow with us.
No school has a stronger connection to that co-opted symbol of bigotry than the University of Mississippi, and one of their former linebackers, C.J. Johnson, perfectly articulated what the flag of the “Southern Cross” or St. Andrews cross, actually means today.
The South is indeed like no other region of these United States given this shared experience of their past.
Us Midwesterners, or New Englanders, or Northern Californians or Southern Californians or Americans from any other region can ever fully understand that.
The closest you can come is to watch and absorb the 2001 documentary “Confederacy Theory.”
The South’s zeitgeist of “American by birth, Southern by the grace of God” is evident in SEC football pride. Oh, sure Alabama fans and LSU fans and Ole Miss fans and so forth all hate each other when they play one another, but they still all come together unlike fans of any other conference come bowl season.
Since 2004, every national championship but two has been claimed by a school from a Southern or literally former Confederate state.
That “S-E-C! S-E-C!” chant has no counterpart in any of the other power five conferences.
Right now, we’re hearing a lot about civil war, mostly from far-right extremists, domestic terrorists and other MAGA heads obsessed with Trump, but what they don’t realize is how the red state versus blue state narrative is a fiction.
It’s actually the electoral map at the county level, not the state, which actually gives you a much clearer picture. And with the counties, every state is magenta, and none are actually red or blue.
And even the county map itself is also grossly inaccurate, as it shows Trump winning an overwhelming majority of the “land,” even though he lost the popular vote by three million in 2016 and seven million in 2020.
Land itself doesn’t vote, only the population does. It’s logistically impossible to actually fight another war between the states because the divide is in counties, cities and towns, households and streets, not full complete states.
Obviously, this country was never as divided it was during the Civil War from 1861-1865. Since then, the 1960s and right now are probably as divisive as it’s ever been..
Just like with secession and rebellion, a lot of SEC fans believe that they have had a special, unique American experience. Thus, every college football season it’s the SEC versus the rest of the country, and the bowl system feeds into this by intentionally trying to pit a northern team against a southern program whenever possible.
The civil war will be staged in the marketplace of ideas instead. This weekend kicks off another season of college football, a sport that has morphed into a Civil War metaphor over the past couple decades.
It’s a much better and healthier way for us as a country to keep fighting the Civil War; better the battle waged in a recreational game than in the courts, or with actual violence.
Paul M. Banks is the Founding Editor of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He currently contributes to USA Today’s NFL Wires Network. His past bylines include the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Washington Post and ESPN. You can follow him on Linked In and Twitter.