Everyone is piling on SEC football right now. Before we join in, let’s take a moment to remind everyone how/why we got here. SEC football is exceptional. With it comes SEC football exceptionalism; and it’s something that the SEC football communities love to remind you of.
This will be the first time since 2005 that we have a national title game without a SEC team. Last year, was the first time since that same year in which we had a non SEC National Champion. From 2003-2012, the SEC won it all every season but two.
SEC football has not one, but four banner programs. The Alabama Crimson Tide won it all in ’09, ’11 and ’12. LSU took home the big prize in ’03 and ’07, Auburn in ’10, Florida in ’96, ’06 and ’08. So the SEC has dominated college football during this past decade and a half.
This meant a backlash was inevitable; especially when you consider how SEC football fans and Sports Information Directors LOVE to remind you how awesome SEC football is, every chance they get. All Media Relations people are egregiously self-promoting when it comes to their schools (after all, it is their job), but the SEC takes it up a notch.
Hence, college football season sort of turns into the SEC vs The Rest of the Country, as the ESPN announcer pointed out during the Outback Bowl between Wisconsin and Auburn.
Auburn tailback Cameron Artis-Payne certainly did his part to inspire backlash:
Strong words, or the truth? Auburn’s Artis-Payne on MGIII’s big year. #Illini pic.twitter.com/gT37Doa6Sy
— Josh Getzoff (@JGetzoffWICD) January 1, 2015
Since we’re on the topic of ESPN, and SEC football, obviously the two institutions are completely in bed with one another. There is that thing called the SEC Network, owned by ESPN, which you’ve heard of. However, to just make the broad sweeping generalization that ESPN has an “SEC bias” is to be simplistic and shallow. As one of the ESPN college football talking heads pointed out back when SEC bias was a trending topic, Bristol would love nothing more than a nationally relevant Big Ten team.
It’s PERFECT for the World Wide Leader to have such a thing because they need an intersectional adversary to pair up against an SEC football team. As this TwitPic below reminds us, Skip Bayless is a cartoonish moron who doesn’t even believe the mindless garbage that he constantly espouses:
???????????? RT @ChipKellyJr: pic.twitter.com/tHjWNWa6YJ — Will Brinson (@WillBrinson) January 2, 2015
However, that screen grab does perfectly embody ESPN’s incessant SEC football promotion which they refer to as “coverage.”
Fox Sports has the same thing with Clay Travis, a college football talking head with perhaps the biggest SEC bias of anyone in the industry. To his credit, he does not hide this bias, as anyone who’s read his book “Dixieland Delight” will attest. It’s a great read, as Travis makes an entertaining visit to every single SEC football stadium within the same season.
However, let’s recall Travis’ early season tweet/prediction:
Never forget. RT @ClayTravisBGID: The Big Ten is officially eliminated from placing a team in the playoff. It is September 6th.
— Football Time in TN (@FootballTimeMag) January 2, 2015
Again, there’s been lots of Big ten bashing from SEC football land, and much of it has been deserved. And if bowl games are about the SEC vs. the rest of the country, then I guess bowl games are a way to subconsciously fight the Civil War all over again. Or at least fight the bullshit “culture wars” and “red-state vs. blue state” farce dreamed up by political mastermind Karl Rove as an electoral strategy.
Everyone is going after the SEC West right on. Like I said, it’s piling on. However, this isn’t about SEC football regressing, it’s about other conferences catching up. The SEC West crashed and burned this bowl season, as did The South itself. (Schools from the states of Florida, Mississippi and Alabama are 0-8 this bowl season)
However, it’s ONE BOWL SEASON. It’s ONE YEAR.
You have to acknowledge SEC football fans for banding together, and supporting each other (for the most part anyway). Southern football fans do seem to come together and support each other at bowl time, more than college football fans in the rest of the nation. (Image above is a notable exception as it’s something Auburn Tigers fans created to root against Alabama and for Notre Dame in the 2012 National Championship game)
Speaking of Notre Dame, (or “Notra Dame” as people in the south often refer to them) here’s what Brian Kelly had to say about beating LSU, one of the league’s biggest traditional powers, in a bowl game:
“It certainly allows us to continue to recruit this area without having to apologize for who we are. Look we’re not going to come into LSU’s territory and steal the top kids in Louisiana, but we’re going to get some of the kids down here because Les (Miles) can’t get ’em all. To beat an SEC school like LSU allows us to continue to build that national credibility that you need in recruiting.”
LSU (8-5) lost for the first time this season to a team not from the Southeastern Conference’s Western Division in the Music City Bowl, and after the game I had to ask ND OLB Jaylon Smith about that well known “SEC speed.”
“I really didn’t see a difference, the difference between the SEC is I feel like they’re more confident because of all the exposure they get,” he replied.
“And from a lineman stand point, everyone is massive, and you don’t see that across the west coast and different opponents we play, but in terms of speed, we have a lot of fast guys here at Notre Dame.”
Since we’re on the topic of Midwestern football vs. SEC football…The Big Ten beat the SEC not once but TWICE on New Year’s Day. Most importantly, the B1G ousted the SEC in their first ever college football playoff match-up, so they took ’em out when it mattered most. No one saw that coming. It seemed surreal.
Quoting The Simpsons (because you can quote The Simpsons for everything in life) Big Ten football over SEC football on New Year’s Day is like….”Yes, in Rand McNally, they actually wear hats on their feet and hamburgers eat people.”
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net ,which is partners with Fox Sports. Read his feature stories in the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. Listen to him on KOZN 1620 The Zone. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks). His work has been featured in hundreds of media outlets including The Washington Post and ESPN 2