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 ...
ROLL TIDE ROLL, but Tebo and company look really good. Well we have the consolation, if we loose, of winning the coach’s salary race.
You ain’t walked the walk this year. You have only talked until you play Florida or Alabama.
Sign me up please, thanks
Bama is actually second behind UK in all time SEC wins, but with Gottfried and Pearl as coaches the Vols may reclaim that in a few years.
no TX or OK on that map (ok maybe we're not deep south but we do tend to like our football)
For the last five years, the best college football has been played in the L.A. Coliseum. SC slaughtered the only SEC team with enough balls to play the Trojans. Anyone who schedules the likes of Troy has no business popping off about its superiority.
You can extend it over from Texas up to Nebraska and get a bunch more good ones.
Oklahoma was the reddest of the red states in this last election.
Go Sooners!
Texas OU championship?
Nice pic! If that doesn’t soothe the savage heart after a hard work week, one isn’t human. Thanks!
Eh, not impressed with the SEC. I mean, seriously, lowly Michigan beat SEC powerhouse Florida this calendar year. ;-)
You might be better off not wanting professional football in Cleveland....
It takes time for loyalties to develop. 20-30 years ago, all you had was Miami (who won), Atlanta and New Orleans. Folks turned to college football. They stay with college football...
Thus the drop off of the Academies - sigh
BUT HEY - GO NAVY BEAT ARMY!
USNA’89
Quit reading the LA Times. Troy is a sleeper that may surprise you.
No question about it, but in order to earn a gentlmen's C, you still have to get in and even as a legatee, that's not going to happen with the average SAT scores and high school GPA of a University of Alabama football player.
I hope they both lose.
Pelagius of Asturias, Tennessee, Class of 1970.
....SEC football was very good 50 years ago as noted....I know,I lived in Atlanta in the early 60s when Ga Tech was in the SEC....the difference between then and now is the addition of the black athlete who did not play back then because of segregation....those ball players went to places like Grambling and Florida A&M that had excellant programs BTW....when elite black athletes started going to places like Alabama things skyrocketed in a hurry.
And I can count the number of people who know of Adolph Rupp on one hand.
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