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 ...
Ping!
SEC...SECond to none!....
Kinda seems like a “duh” thing.
It’s easy to figure out what’s going on. Population shift is the key.
Isn't educational achievement in a public education system kind of like getting Verne Troyer as your partner in a dwarf toss?
Football is a nice way to pass the time until basketball season starts. Adolph Rupp got a car, Bear Bryant only got a watch.
The SEC has been the best college football conference for about the last half century or so. Nothing recent about that.
Don’t forget about the SEC of Division 1-AA football that includes the 3 time defending champs APPALACHIAN STATE.
The Southern Conference is made up of 12 member institutions from five Southeastern states. Below are some links to brief information about each of the schools:
Appalachian State University
The Citadel
Elon University
Furman University
Georgia Southern University
Samford University
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Western Carolina University
Wofford College
True, but the north has all the industry and a much larger population. You take out Richmond, Missippi, and South Carolina, and Atlanta will surely fall.
Hockey was invented to be able to completely avoid Bassetball.
But not at Kentucky. But I don't think that they have many complaints about the way things turned out either in Kentucky or Alabama.
Hush now.
The South doesn’t need even MORE Yankees moving there...
College Football is big in the south because that’s all they have. There is minimal NFL presence there.
Florida is the only decent SEC team this year, they are gonna destroy Bama.
Big12 South is the strongest conference in the land this year. WSJ should stick to stuff they know.
“What the Rise of Southern Football Says About America.”
I think it says that the admissions standards and academic requirements at the top football schools in the south are so low that these colleges and universities have an easier time recruiting the nation’s top high school football players. Even under the relatively relaxed admissions standards for football recruits at places like Boston College, Notre Dame, Penn State, Syracuse, etc.(which are probably higher than the general admissions standards at many of the southern football factories), a large number of the top recruits cannot meet the admissions requirements and even if they could, they don’t like the idea of actually having to go to class and pass real courses.
It’s practicing (and playing) in the heat.
“College Football is big in the south because that’s all they have. There is minimal NFL presence there.”
I find the NFL to be an inferior product to college football. Of course I’m biased, we haven’t had professional football in Cleveland for the last 10+ years.
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