Size matters. That’s why the SEC is Goliath…because the Southeastern Conference, top to bottom, has better players, better coaches, better stadiums, better bank accounts, better weather, and what else, bigger players.
Six straight years the SEC has walked off with the big crystal prize and they will not give it back. The talk of “Big boy football” grinds on the Buckeyes, Sooners, Longhorns, or Ducks, and all they can come back with is “Wait until next year” and then next year comes and the SEC tribe is chanting in the closing minutes of the national championship game, “SEC, SEC, SEC!”
The national championship trophy has been in the south so long it has sunburn. It’s why college football is thick with the acrimony, SEC vs. Everyone Else. The dominance of the SEC has a lot more to do with the South’s culture than just the rock-em, sock-em of football played one day a week. The south lost the Civil War and sociologists will tell you that there is still a regional angst and an “us against them”, a spirit of “those damn Yankees” 147 years following the end of the war. It is not just about championships. The SEC is about culture, climate, and competiveness….It is about players.
Six of the top ten states that have the most players in the NFL, per capita, are within the SEC footprint. The SEC states have better players where it counts in today’s game of the quarterback-centric spread offense: defensive linemen.
Ray Glier covers the entire SEC and how the league became so dominant in winning six straight national championships. This book is not a celebration of the Southeastern Conference’s golden era and six milestones. It is about the passage to those titles.
Ray Glier is a freelance journalist in Atlanta. He contributes to USA TODAY, The New York Times, The Miami Herald, among other publications. He has covered the Southeastern Conference since 1986 and is the former executive sports editor of The Knoxville Journal.
