Why Do SEC Fans Talk So Much About Their Conference?

nk of your own siblings. You may say nasty things about your brother and have fistfights in the back yard.

But in the end, nobody else better badmouth your brother or that person will be answering to you. That is the mentality in the South.

There are exceptions. Many Bama fans cannot bring themselves to pull for Auburn in a bowl game, even though it helps the conference maintain its standing as the nation's best. I personally find it hard to root for Tennessee under any circumstances.

But I have friends who are UT fans; we joke and it never gets out of hand. There is a Southern gentility about the whole thing in that we can get very rowdy, but we always try to stay respectful.

Speaking of one big family, here's something else you don't see much in other conferences.  In fact, one might think of it as nearly "incestuous."  Tommy Tuberville was the Ole Miss coach before he became the Auburn coach.  Nick Saban was the LSU coach before becoming the Bama coach. Steve Spurrier was the Florida coach before taking the South Carolina job. Houston Nutt was the Arkansas coach before he became the Ole Miss coach.

There aren't any other conferences whose fan bases could so quickly accept as their own someone who used to coach a rival or another conference school.  Imagine if Lloyd Carr took the head coaching job at Wisconsin or Ohio State.  It would never happen.

It's because we're all tight that way that it can happen here. The way we see it, it makes for some good Saturday drama and some pretty clever and funny T-shirts that get sold by the merchandise vendors in the parking lots.

By this point, you may be thinking "those hicks, those rednecks."  In some ways, that may be part of it. I will admit that for most "rednecks" their favorite sport is football (and usually the college kind), and that they very strongly pull for their own teams.

However, they also pull for the Southern teams against the non-Southern teams, too. It's just a Southern thing.

Finally, the reason that we find it so easy to pull for each other when we play outside the conference is because we know without a doubt that the other school's fans are pulling for our team when we play out of conference.

Believe me, when your team of choice doesn't "represent" the family well, we the fans hear about it from the other school's fans.  It's because we all mutually want the protect the family name.

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