Why College Football In The South Is The Best In The US–Lessons In Culture

Football in the South is very, very important.  Towns within 100 miles of a major team like Alabama, Mississippi,or Mississippi State begin preparing for game day long before the event.  There are pep rallies, parades, barbecues; hats, jerseys, car flags, banners, and coffee cups.  The discussion on the radio, at the gym, or on the street is college football.  “Our” team.

Many regions of the US are as supportive and passionate about their teams as the South and huge Big Ten stadiums are filled to capacity on Saturdays; but do intense Southern allegiances have something to do with winning? Allen Barra writing in the Atlantic (12.2.12) thinks so.

The reasons for this unequalled dominance aren't clear. In his 1954 memoir, This Was Football, my favorite football historian, W.W. "Pudge" Heffelfinger, Walter Camp's first ever All-America selection back in the 1890s, wrote, "Southern football players play with a reckless abandon, a wild fanaticism that's rarely found in players from other parts of the nation." That's a generalization, of course. But why does it seem true?

Tradition and rivalry are the reason, suggests Barra.  And the South seems to have an overabundance of both:

The enthusiasm generated by match-ups like Georgia vs. Florida or LSU vs. Tennessee or Alabama vs. Auburn is the lifeblood of SEC football, a manifestation of Whitman's "barbaric yawp" that has survived into the 21st century. This year, SEC stadiums have been jammed to nearly 95 percent capacity, tops in the country. According to a Sports Business Journal study in 2009, six Southern football programs—Alabama, LSU, Florida, Georgia, Auburn, and South Carolina—were among the top 11 producers in football revenue in the nation.

This still doesn’t answer the question why traditions and rivalries are so much more pronounced in the South.  Some have suggested cultural reasons – the South has always been and still is one of the most conservative areas of the United States. Preserving and protecting traditional ways of life and honoring the past has particular resonance in the South. No other region of the country is so evocative of the past; no region has fought so hard to retain a distinctive regional identity. What better or at least more visible way to publicly display regional pride and excellence than through a winning football team.

Sports in America are never just games, but emblems.  A passionate Mets fan (heard any late night on WFAN in New York where the truly passionate come out to talk) will love his beloved team even though given free agency the one he roots for today has no resemblance to the one he supported five years ago.  The uprooting of the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants to the West Coast were considered travesties. The Baltimore Colts owners were so worried about this same kind of fan reaction that they moved the team to Indianapolis under cover of darkness.

If the visceral, emblematic nature of sports fandom is added to the South’s particular reverence for tradition, you have a heady mix of potent, permanent allegiance; and, as Pudge Heffelfinger suggested above, this fiery emotion is picked up and shared by the players.

Barra adds one more element to the mix– rivalry. The same Southern colleges have battled each other for decades.  The SEC was formed in 1932 with 13 teams and ten have remained.  Two more teams were added in 1990, and additional expansion is contemplated.  However, the rivalries of the ten original teams has continued for seventy years.  Other conferences, such as the Big Ten, started at the turn of the 20th Century, are bigger with a longer history, but when this long history of SEC rivalries is added to tradition, the mix becomes even more potent.

All well and good up to this point; but purely cultural explanations and intense rivalries do not seem quite enough.  Barra adds another:

While rivalries are important everywhere, in the North, Northeast, Midwest and West Coast, college football competes with major league baseball, pro football, the NBA, and even hockey for a fan's attention. In the South, people celebrate Bear Bryant's birthday even though it falls on September 11. Generations who were unborn when LSU's Billy Cannon made his great 69-yard punt return against Ole Miss in 1959 regularly relive the glory of the run on YouTube.

Barra suggests that in many parts of the South, such as in Mississippi, college football has few sports which compete with college football, unlike major metropolitan areas with NHL, NFL, NBA, and MLB teams.  One may already have a passionate commitment to Ole Miss, Mississippi State, or Alabama, but, but since sports focus in almost entirely focused on them, it is likely that interest in the team, its players, trades, management, finances, and fortune will be even greater. Total fan allegiance is enhanced.

Another reason may be that SEC games are played near each other, fueling the rivalries:

Thompson feels that the SEC's gaudy record in the BCS is due in part "because SEC teams usually play in bowls at or near home stadiums, which often results in more favorable matchups for SEC teams."

Perhaps the real reason SEC teams are so successful today is because they are winners. Because of its perennially successful record, the SEC will attract the best athletes, thus further consolidating the supremacy of the conference.  The fiery play on the field may have nothing at all to do with the South, tradition, or rivalries, but highly motivated players who see Auburn, Ole Miss, or Alabama as their meal tickets to the NFL.  The fans filling the huge stadiums of the South may be white, conservative traditionalists, but the players on the field are mostly black and poor, and the main thought in their minds is making it to professional football.

According to the National Football League, over the last 20 years 576 players from the conference have been drafted into the pros. That's more than the next two leagues—the PAC 12 (250) and the Big 12 (224)—combined.

In conclusion, the current success of the SEC is most probably due to the great players on the field, the coaching and recruiting staff, the front office, and the owners – the basic elements of any successful franchise; but no one in the conference can ignore the complex roles of Southern tradition and rivalries, a passionate fan base and a storied football history which got it to where it is today.