This is being written primarily to help those outside the SEC to see us in a different light.

So let’s face it SEC, Nation, to a degree that I wish we were not, I’m afraid that this is the way many conferences view us.

I can confidently say that while the vast majority of us are none of the three, from what I’ve heard and read, it definitely seems that much of the rest of the nation does see us this way. 

This is primarily because of those who fit the above three traits are broadcasting these qualities so often and so loud.

Moving to Chicago at age 20 in 1955, after living my first 20years in Alabama, as I finally came to see it for much of the South, I realized that many Southerners were still, and some still are, fighting the Civil War.

But for me, even as a child, it never had anything to do with my not liking that the old Southern way of life having been destroyed.  It was wrong from the beginning and had to be knocked flat on its butt.  My fighting was only defending the SEC and in particular, the Crimson Tide.     

While living in Chicago from 1955 to 1969, and in Nebraska in the early and late 90’s, while I would have never considered myself as having any of these three qualities, my fanatical boasting about the SEC and Bama was probably seen as being arrogant and obnoxious. 

But all anyone would ever need to do is spend enough time among the well-behaved Crimson Tide people to see how fanatical most of us are, but void of being ignorant, arrogant and obnoxious.

There is definitely something infectious about the Tide atmosphere, and especially so in Tuscaloosa.  I know many of our faculty who became bigger fans of Bama than they ever were of the university where they received their degrees.  And I also know of other Bama alumni who still remain very loyal to the Tide, wherever they may eventually live. 

This fanaticism is as true in Mississippi as much as it is in Alabama, two states that will probably never have an NFL team. Nothing could ever be as important as the intrastate rivalries both of us have.  The changing Pro teams we tend to pull for are those who have players who played at our universities.

When Virginia came within one vote of making slavery illegal before the war began, should that have happened, maybe it could have been the motivating factor for the remainder of the Confederacy, which, along with slavery, was also the last place on earth where “chivalry and their fair maidens” still existed. 

Both lifestyles were doomed, but it’s unfortunate that all of this could not have had a far more peaceful ending, which for so many years, resulted in the South becoming a nation unto itself, and for some people, unfortunately, still is.

There are few Southerners left who could possibly remember anything about Alabama’s victory over Washington in the 1926 Rose Bowl Game, but there is a good recorded history and movie about this. 

It was the first “victory” the South had experienced after the Civil War ended.

From the time the train taking the Tide back home arrived in Texas, people were lined up along the railroad tracks expressing their joy about this victory of Alabama earning the first of their 12 national championships. 

I doubt that anyone could come up with the appropriate words for truly describing the ways multiple celebrations in Tuscaloosa were held after they arrived home.  The local student newspaper soon had a contest for the composition of a good Alabama fight song. 

With our first ever bowl game victory, the words “Remember the Rose Bowl, we’ll win then,” were very appropriate for “Yea Alabama” being selected as the winner.   

When in 1920, after the Rose Bowl always had only a Pac 10 host school playing in this game, USC made its first appearance in 1923, followed by Alabama’s first appearance in 1926. 

From 1920, until the Pac 10 and Big Ten contract began after Bama’s 35-14 victory over USC in the 1946 game, the Tide, with six appearances (4-1-1), was second only to the Trojan’s 9 times in the Rose Bowl. 

Four other SEC teams (twice for Tennessee and one each for Georgia Tech, Tulane, and Georgia), were there during this time, with their total of two wins and three losses.

With the Tide having become the most frequent visitor to the Rose Bowl, they had come to sort of expect to always hold this visiting team record.

The SEC liked the Big Ten defeating the Pac 10 in every game from 1947 to 1959, but they also began resenting both the Big Ten and the Pac 10 claiming to always being the best two conferences in the nation, particularly since neither the Big Ten nor Pac 10 would ever agree to playing anyone in the SEC.

Before these conferences began recruiting black players, it still could have happened. 

The closest the Tide came to appearing again in the Rose Bowl was in 1962.  The Minnesota Gophers had been in the previous Rose Bowl, which under the Rose Bowl agreement, they were not to make a repeat appearance. 

Ohio State won the Big Ten title in 1961, but a faculty council dispute emphasized academics over athletics, and didn’t permit the Ohio State football team to go.    

Alabama had already been chosen as the national champion, and the Gophers, who finished second that year, had losses to Wisconsin and Missouri.  The Rose Bowl began considering inviting undefeated Alabama, but soon realized the heated protests there would be about a still all-white Alabama team playing in the game. 

Minnesota was offered the opportunity to make a repeat performance.  The Gophers were led by Sandy Stephens, the first African American All-American quarterback, to a 21-3 victory over UCLA in the first national color television broadcast of a college football game.

In December 1932, 13 members of the Southern Conference pulled out and formed the new Southeastern Conference. 

The Tide won the first conference championship and despite the two-year losing streak and the not-so-good years since the Bear retired, they have still won more SEC titles than all other conference schools, hold the record of the most bowl game appearances, and no SEC team has ever held a winning percentage over Alabama. 

Yes, Bama does boast about our history, as all colleges with our kind of record also do.  But I see much of the observed obnoxious behavior other conferences see in us as primarily related to the frustration of the SEC always considering it as strong as any conference, but not recognized as such.

But once that became apparent to other conferences, it still took many years after integration of the SEC began, that allowed playing anyone anywhere began to prove it.  I’m afraid that long held frustration has never been totally released. 

While there have been rare meetings with Pac 10 Schools, I am not aware of any regular season play between the SEC and the Big Ten.

As is always the case with the winningest team of any conference, Alabama is the university most schools in the SEC like to see lose, with the exceptions of those who most always pull for their conference members to win their bowl games.

As an alumnus of Alabama, I will always pull for the Tide under all circumstances.  But after coming back to Alabama in 1997, I soon discovered I didn’t like the ways many of Alabama’s fans had become obnoxious. 

When I played in the Million Dollar Band, when a visiting opponent was playing us without their band, we played that school’s fight song as their team came running on the field. 

With or without the opposing team’s band, most everyone now begins booing when their opponent first comes on the field, which could only add to the opponents' drive to win.

One year, when the Million Dollar Band was performing in one of the first Iron Bowl games, while facing the Auburn side, they formed a large eagle, starting with Auburn’s fight song, but began diminishing in size before playing “Sparrow in the Tree Tops.”

Yes, between 1935 and 1969, we were consistently ranked along with Ohio State and Michigan as being the three best bands in the nation, but doing this was still very inappropriate to do. 

There was a time when the Million Dollar Band never failed to win their half-time performance, but the Auburn Band has improved to the point in which that certainty is no longer in place.     

I also do not like, with maybe the sometimes exception when playing our two most bitter out of state rivalries, our first yelling “We’re gonna beat the hell out of you” and when we do win, even over an opponent that had little opportunity to win the game, “We just beat the hell out of you.” 

And booing our team’s players, against men who are in no way professionals, I find appalling.  This could in no way motivate them to play better. 

It would be far better to applaud them, whether they have won or not, when it was apparent they have given it their best, which is what we used to do many years ago. 

During my years in Big Ten territory, with Purdue becoming my second favorite team and also while in the old Big 8 territory, I never saw this kind of behavior. 

I hope those of you in other conferences reading this have come to a better understanding of why many of our conference members, still holding onto the angry frustration many held before we were able to demonstrate how good we were, come across as being obnoxious.     

I wish some kind of movement could get started for the 2009 season, not only for Bama, but for the entire SEC, of trying to be seen as the most hospitable member of the conference, in which our visitors compliment us on how well they enjoyed being on our campus and not how obnoxious we sometimes come across.

Whatever happened to Southern Hospitality?