Why the SEC is so dominate in college sports

Over the last couple of decades, and more so in college football the last six years, it has become evident that the SEC is in a league of their own in sports. Most people believe this to be true just about football, but actually the SEC dominates just about every sport it participates in.

Many people outside of the SEC are in an uproar over the fact that LSU and Alabama could potentially meet AGAIN in the BCS Championship game. This wouldn’t be the only time two teams from the same conference would have wound up being pit against each other in a championship game. It’s already happened once this year, and again it was the SEC who had two teams meet in the championship round in college baseball.

South Carolina and Florida met after going through a tournament, which is how championships should be won, and came out on top to give the SEC their second straight crown in college baseball, the last one won by South Carolina as well. In fact, Vanderbilt was eliminated by Florida in that tournament giving the SEC three teams in the final four of the College World Series. I think it’s safe to say that if college football had a tournament in place to determine their champion it would more than likely be Alabama and LSU playing at the end of it, so why shouldn’t they play for it in the BCS championship if they’re the two best teams in the country?

There are numerous points that could be made in numerous other sports, but the point of this article was to show why the SEC is so dominate, and when I think about why that is, I don’t think it’s because they have the best talent, money or academics. It’s because it’s all the people in the South have. There aren’t many professional teams down South for fans to draw to, and the few that there are they don’t get much fan support until they win the Super Bowl (Saints) or World Series (Braves). Not even the Marlins who have won two World Series since 1997 can get any fan support. Or the Rays who have won the AL East over Boston and New York twice over the past four years can get some love.

In contrast, people in Los Angeles don’t care that USC isn’t dominating college football anymore because they can go watch the Dodgers, Lakers, Kings, Angels, Giants, Padres, etc. People up North don’t care that Syracuse or UCONN isn’t winning national titles because they have the Patriots, Red Sox, Yankees, Knicks, Islanders, Bruins, etc. It’s not as important to them and that’s something people in the South just won’t understand.

People in the South are passionate about the state they live in or the state they grew up in. It gives them pride in something that people up North don’t have. Fans in the South expect championships. They expect dominance, and if that doesn’t happen they expect firings and change until it does happen.

More specifically you can feel the passion in Alabama where the closest action you can get to professional sports is the Birmingham Barons. Many people make fun of the fact that most Alabama fans didn’t even graduate from the University of Alabama or at least go there. That’s because being an Alabama fan means absolutely nothing about the academics or the university, it’s about having pride in the state you grew up in. To most Alabama fans it’s just like cheering for the Cardinals because you grew up in St. Louis or cheering for the Bears because you were born in Illinois. It gives them recognition/significance on a national level.  

The fans in the SEC push their schools to become better and the universities welcome it because the sports bring in so much money for that particular university. Without the fans the SEC is just another ACC, a bunch of low level teams that always underachieve, unless you’re Virginia Tech.

It’s their passion that makes players want to sign for an Auburn, Georgia, Florida or even Kentucky. A player knows that if he can dominate on a low level SEC team like Kentucky he’s still going to get that exposure because just about every SEC game is now broadcast on national television.

It just seems like ever since LSU won the title in 2003, it’s created so much jealousy around other teams in the SEC that it’s just pushed every fan base that much harder and in return pushing their school that much harder to win a championship. The SEC has won seven of the 13 BCS National Championship games, and I think just about everybody in the nation knows Auburn should have won it in 2004, which would have given the SEC seven of the past eight championships. There is a reason the SEC is so dominate, and I believe it’s the drive of each fan base that pushes the universities to compete against each other making the SEC so much better than any other conference.