RE: If the SEC did expand again and did so from the Big 12 who should we take and why?
I'll offer a counter viewpoint on why the rise of the SEC has been as great as it has been.
The South was not a pro union region. The first moves of corporations were not overseas but rather away from pro union states. So the economy of the South particularly the Southeast which did not have the money from oil and was therefore more accommodating to industrial location attracted jobs and money that once resided elsewhere in the nation.
2. The South has had a long long family history of father's and son's who played athletics whether baseball, football or both. Culturally no part of the nation supported the government policies of the Viet Nam era more completely than did the Southeast and Southwest. God, Country, Family are interwoven into the fabric of the Southeast and Southwest and were still very dominant themes in the 70's and 80's when those values were slipping away in the West, Northeast, and parts of the Midwest. As those values slipped elsewhere dedication and encouragement of combative sports like football began to slip with them somewhat.
3. The South remained more rural than many parts of the West and Northeast. Kids grew up working outdoors in farming, saw milling, ranching, or some field related to one of the above. They fished and hunted and were interested in martial activities and their natural aggression found outlets in those activities and in sports and they grew in self confidence not out of hype (that's B.S.) but out of experience in relying upon themselves.
4. In small towns and rural areas in the South where there was new money from jobs locating near their communities even the poor could afford to buy their kids football pads and encourage their participation in organized sports which until there were more than a few channels on television were the communities' favorite avenue of entertainment. The children enjoyed the adulation of the parents, the parents enjoyed the adulation of the community, and the community enjoyed the successes of their sports teams.
Prior to the jobs however the poor kids didn't get to participate as much as the middle and upper income kids did. So this was a huge turning point for the Southeast. Prior to that time poor kids, particularly poor African American kids had limited access to sports and community support. The so called great era of the Big 10 had two issues going for it. In the 50's through the early 70's Jim Crow didn't affect Big 10 athletics. Talented Southern black kids could get a scholarship in the Big 10 and their parents could get jobs in the North. Hence the strength of the Big 10 was enhanced. In the 70's that started to change for many reasons. Jobs leaving, the death of Jim Crow in the South, the first scholarships offered to African American kids to go to SEC schools, and the end of African American migration North. Most black families are very conservative when it comes to Christian values. With opportunities being opened to them in the South the motivation to leave for a less culturally suitable areas of the country became less appealing.
5. With the advent of the electronic age the South has been one of the last areas, in the rural portions, to suffer the disinterest in sports that many of the kids of today eschew in favor of video games and other forms of electronic entertainment. Perhaps it is only in the rural South and Southwest that boys are still expected to show their manhood in competition, and where some of them still prefer the outdoors to the video monitor. What you are now seeing as the SEC dominance has nothing to do with arrogance, it has everything to do with a culture that still encourages sports, still supports sports from the pee wee ranks up through high school, and still goes nuts over college athletics. Do you think attendance records in the South are just part of hype as well? There are three very successful programs in the Big 10 (Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State). They also have the largest populations and in the rural areas the values that still support sports like in the South. Outside of those schools and the SEC the rest of the nation just doesn't turn out to support their sports programs. I would argue that Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State ought to join the Texas schools and Oklahoma schools in the SEC because their fans share the same habits of support.
In rural areas of the South everybody still turns out on Friday nights to watch the local high school teams, even if they have no children playing. That's no longer the case in the cities of the South where sports attendance for high school games is practically nil. Yankees will tell you that's because high schools can't compete with other forms of entertainment. That's B.S.. It's because their is no sense of pride or of community in cities where neighbors do not know each other by name, and everyone is carefully trained to be afraid of everybody else. Birmingham, Atlanta, New Orleans, Jacksonville, Knoxville, Savannah, and Nashville all suffer from low support of high school athletics. Small town South has no such problem in most locations. Community pride is still the motivation for the turnout. The kids are still cheered during the week the same as they are on Friday night, and their parents are congratulated at work as well as after the games. This happens because in small towns across the South people still know each other whether they are in the same social class or not and Friday's are cohesion events.
6. The SEC is at a zenith because it represents the last of what once made America great. It wan't always representative of this and it wasn't always great. But it's probably the last part of America where there is small town cohesion coupled with jobs, coupled with a still viable middle class, coupled with sports traditions, coupled with kids who aren't raised to be gang members, druggies, or video wusses, because their parents encourage them, their daddy's have jobs, their church families encourage them, their communities are proud of them, and they are encouraged to be better than even they think they can be. Therefore they produce. They love sports. And they are in sufficient numbers to make the success of their local college teams apparent.
But even the South is losing that. It is being replaced by the narcissistic spoiled me first wealthy kids who have never participated in a true team endeavor and only know what mamma and daddy can buy them, the drug doing lazy latch key middle class kids who only aspire to be Beavis and Butthead and are afraid of the physicality of competition, and the poor kids who have no daddies, whose mom's are working two and three jobs to keep their families fed, who have no community support or faith based support to encourage them and have only the gangs to support them in an ever increasing violent society. In other words Olive and Blue the sickness that is an immoral America is infecting the deep South and Southwest and what was one of the few remaining pockets of community oriented life is dying here too. It has come in through electronic cultures influence and with those corporate jobs that started locating here in the 70's, and through a general disillusionment in the structures of our society. No faith in government. No faith in religious institutions. No faith in justice. No faith ultimately in each other. It's New York and Los Angeles spread everywhere and its disgusting.
What you call the success of the SEC is really just the only vestige of what made this country that is still left around. When it dies out the nation will truly just be a shell of its former self and when our technology is no longer paramount someone else will kick our butts. China is first in line. Look at the folks around you every day and ask yourself this question, "if we were under assault by an enemy invader who here would risk their life for me?" Because a nation that can't stick up for each other is destined to die individually. When we have no community, no civic and national pride, no sense of teamwork, and no cohesion we are toast.
(This post was last modified: 09-26-2013 11:26 AM by JRsec.)
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If the SEC did expand again and did so from the Big 12 who should we take and why?
