Posted on 12/05/2008 12:54:10 PM PST by bamahead
College football has been conquered, in nearly every respect, by the Deep South.
The Southeastern Conference, a 76-year-old coalition of 12 universities in nine Southern states stretching from Louisiana to Florida, has won three national college football titles in five years, including the last two by blowout, and has an unrivaled 11-4 record in the Bowl Championship Series since 1999.
Its teams lead the nation in average attendance, have five of the 12 highest-paid coaches in college football and just signed two broadcast deals worth as much as $3 billion over the next 15 years. Tomorrow, Alabama and Florida, ranked No. 1 and No. 2 by the Associated Press, play for the conference title -- with the winner likely heading to the national title game.
The engine of this success is college football's unshakable primacy in Southern culture -- plus the recent shifts in population and wealth, the protection of politicians and some prescient financial moves by the conference that have reinforced it.
In recent years, the South has undergone rapid growth. Twenty-seven of the 50 fastest-growing metropolitan regions in the country in 2007 were in the South, while personal-income growth in the region outpaced the national average over the past decade. These changes have added muscle to the South's historic passion for college football. While they rank low in many measures like per-capita income and educational achievement, states like Alabama and Mississippi rank close to the top in the percentage of high-school students who play football. And among states that have more than 10 native sons playing in the National Football League, the top six producers by percentage of population are Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama, Florida and Georgia...
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
One more little dig at The Bear.
What SEC football coach did Paul Bryant never, ever beat?
Answer: Robert R. Neyland
So there.
I guess you've never been to Kentucky.:)
Basketball is a religion there, maybe more than fottball is in Alabama.
I always forget about Miami - must be because it’s Dim land...ha ha...as soon as I hit the post button I realized I’d let them off - and I love Miami - they gave us Saban! ROLL TIDE
Every single one of those teams was founded after 1960. Prior to the founding of the AFL and the NFL expansion of the 1960's , the only southern team in the NFL was the Washington Redskins.
As a long time season ticket holder at the USMA, I feel your pain. Go ARMY!
In all series, I don’t buy the part about the changing demographics as the reason why southern schools dominate big time college football. The number of colleges and universities with football programs hasn’t changed all that much over the last 50 years or so, and if anything there are probably fewer programs now than then because of Title VII. For whatever reason, the top high school recruits from both the north and south are chosing southern colleges and universities. I suspect that reason may have something to do with the admissions requirements and academic expectations that the school expects from its players.
I’m a nervous wreck about tomorrow....I’ve already broke one of my back teeth grinding them at night worrying about the Awburn game - made it through that one and now have to worry about this one....but we’re so far ahead of what I anticipated at the end of last year - I truly figured we’d win 8 at the most....boy am I shocked!
Robert R. Neyland never played the Bear’s Crimson Tide. That said, Neyland’s record at Tennessee was astounding.
He beat Bryant's teams a number of times when Bryant was at Kentucky.
Kentucky ain’t the Crimson Tide.
Actually Troy could probably beat several PAC 10, or is it PAC 12? schools.
I've also noticed that within metro areas, there's usually either a dominant college or pro team, but seldom both. In Texas, for example, the Longhorns own Austin. There's a base metro population of well over a million, and the city is larger than half the NFL cities, but there's never been much interest in a pro team here because of the Texas Longhorns. The Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex is dominated by the Cowboys, so the TCU Horned Frogs and SMU don't attract big crowds. Miami is somewhat unique in that both the Dolphins and Hurricanes pull big crowds (when they're playing well.)
I recently moved from the Pacific Northwest to the Houston area. In driving through Texas on the way, I saw three high school football stadiums that had four story press boxes.
Quite true, but the original post was correct. Bryant never beat Neyland. Whether Bryant at Alabama could have inmproved his .000 percentage against Neyland’s Vols is a question we’ll never know the answer to.
I try to forget them every chance I get. :)
Herb had three NCAA titles with the University of Minnesota in the ‘70s, and coached at St. Cloud State in the ‘80s.
We've got those high school facilities here in Ohio as well.
Neyland’s Tennessee squeaked out 7-0 victory over Bryant’s Kentucky in 1950, but lost the SEC title to the Bear with a poorer conference record.
But those two private schools also have much smaller student populations which ultimately means a smaller number of alumni available to go to games. If there were a university in the DFW metroplex with a 50,000 enrollment and a competitive football program, it wouldn't have trouble filling a 70,000+ seat stadium. Also consider how expensive NFL games have gotten to attend. The new Dallas Cowboy's stadium in Arlington sold personal seat licenses that cost about $100,000 for the right to purchase season tickets for 2 seats every year at $100 per ticket for 10 games including preseaon. College football tickets are less expensive.
“Hush now.
The South doesn’t need even MORE Yankees moving there...”
Amen and amen! Or illegal (Mexican) aliens.
Let’s not put a politically correct spin on the reason for the obvious superiority of South Eastern Conference Football and tell it like it really is.
Football is a manly sport and quite frankly, southern men are just more manly than our northern bretheren, plain and simple.
Population shift mt a@#.
Look Dave,
There are plenty of kids who go to home state schools or whatever.
Just go and ask a coach if they lose many of the best to Florida schools. And it ain’t cause its the best available education.
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