SEC Loyalty

My last few posts have been of the more serious type, so I figured I'd change things up a little bit.

I'm a sports fan. I love basketball and football, particularly of the college variety but I'm a sucker for any kind of postseason (even though I think the bowl system and the BCS is the dumbest way to attempt to determine a champion. More on that later) whether it's NBA, NFL, college hoops, college football, and even sometimes pro baseball (sorry soccer, hockey, and college baseball, I don't care about you.) And, in gearing up for last night's BCS mythical national championship game, I kinda knew what was going to happen. People around here were going to start beating their chests about the SEC and SEC loyalty and of course they were going to pull for Auburn. I did not pull for Auburn, and (contrary to what some people think they know) it was not for any contrarian reason other than I like Oregon and have since Dennis Dixon and Jonathan Stewart played there a few years ago. I didn't grow up wearing green and yellow, but I like them. I'm fascinated with the Pacific Northwest, so Oregon, Oregon State, and Washington typically catch my eye when they're playing (sorry Washington State...) I've also had a couple of friends play football at Stanford so I like the PAC-10. I have my reasons, and they aren't just to be different.

That said, I don't get why everybody is into this "conference loyalty" thing. Maybe it's different for me because I attended an SEC institution, but when it comes to the SEC, and especially the SEC West, I hope every team outside of Ole Miss loses every game they play. Ever. Against anyone except for Ohio State (thanks, Arkansas), Notre Dame, Arizona State, any Big XII team besides Texas, or USC. So outside of that handful of teams, I hope the SEC West loses every game they play. Let me be clear on that. And I've got my reasons for each individual school. Personal reasons. Auburn, stole our coach and buys players. Alabama, they beat us all the time. Arkansas, Bobby Petrino sucks and their fans still won't leave us alone even though they've been to a BCS game since Nutt left. LSU is LSU. Everybody hates them. And Mississippi State because of the in state rivalry thing.

But for more than those reasons, too. It doesn't make sense for people loyal to a school to want a rival school to win. Particularly at places like Mississippi State and Ole Miss where the deck is already stacked against us in areas like recruiting, fanbase, media attention, and just general cash flow, it doesn't make sense to want to see your rival schools win because it's a zero sum game. Ole Miss is not going to benefit in any way, shape, or form from Auburn winning a mythical national championship, just like we didn't benefit from any of the other SEC teams that won the mythical national championship a few years ago (except POSSIBLY Florida because we beat them and it was a pretty big deal. But I'm not sure if it did or not.) In fact, it's going to hurt us because we're in direct competition for recruits with Auburn that are close enough battles that something like the mythical national championship could swing the momentum in the wrong direction for us.

It's a zero sum game. People don't seem to understand that. It makes your people have to work so much harder against so much more to move ahead. If a guy like Nick Saban is your coach, who doesn't give a crap what anyone else does as long as you do what you're supposed to do (a lot like John Wooden), then it's not that big of a deal. But that's why the Nick Sabans of the world are so rare.

Now, conference loyalty DOES make sense in basketball because RPI and strength of schedule are important factors in determining your postseason fate. But bowl games aren't decided like that. Bowl games, outside of the mythical national championship game and the rest of the BCS, are based on one thing and one thing only - how much money the participants are going to bring in to the city and the sponsors and other things like that. It's all about money.

People relate it to a family sometimes, but it's like a family where all the members hate each other and spend all year trying to get each other in trouble (ahem...Mississippi State and Auburn) and then when we get to bowl season we're all buddy buddy and are supposed to want them to win? Sorry, that just doesn't make sense to me. And maybe it doesn't make sense to me because I actually got to go to a school that I love athletically (as well as almost every other way you can love a school) and it makes sense to more casual fans. I don't know.

So what is it? Is it about respect? Is it about somehow sticking it to those yankees up north and those...whatever we call them out west to show them the south is the best? Is it...what? I don't really ever get any feedback on here, which is fine, but maybe somebody will answer. I just don't see too often when people start chanting "PAC-10! PAC-10! PAC-10!" after they win a bowl game (which they do quite often) the way people start the "SEC" chant after an SEC team wins a bowl game. Also, I'd be willing to bet that had Oregon won the game Monday night, a whole bunch of Stanford fans wouldn't have gone out and bought Oregon t-shirts the way people do down here. In fact, that's probably the one thing I'm grateful for about being confined to this house right now, is that I'm isolated from all that crap.

Maybe somebody will explain it to me. Maybe I'll see the light. But odds are I'm going to continue to stick by my Rebels through thick and thin, hope the rest of the SEC West loses, and wonder why, after such an incredible game, we don't have a college football playoff? I mean seriously - could you imagine a tournament with TCU, Stanford, Wisconsin, Oregon, Auburn, and Ohio State in there? I'm sure I'm leaving out a few, but dang, that would be fun.

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