🏈 Good read: S-E-C! S-E-C! S-E-C! That inescapable chant and the "new" southern pride

[TerryP]

When I first heard the chant, I was sitting in the Rose Bowl with a Mangino-sized scowl on my face. My Texas Longhorns had gotten their legs (and arms) broken by Alabama. Crimson Tide fans — thousands of them in white button-downs and khaki pants — were hugging each other and laying their cheers on us: "We're gonna beat the hell out of you!" That's when I heard the chant. "S-E-C! S-E-C! S-E-C!"


These guys cheer for the whole conference? Yup, they do. As the Tide and their pals won five straight national championships, something happened to modern SEC fandom. The SEC fan roots for his school, of course. But he also roots for his conference, and, in an interesting, New South kind of way, his whole region. The thing historians used to call southern exceptionalism — and its first cousin on its mother's side, southern solidarity — has been channeled into a football fight song. Chanting "S-E-C!" is the last polite way to root for the South.


Listen as "S-E-C!" rings throughout BSC-dom. Oregon got a chorus from LSU Tigers fans Saturday night — a sequel to the SEC chant Auburn fans laid on them at January's title game. LSU players chanted it at Ohio State after the 2008 title game; Florida Gators fans chanted it at the Buckeyes in 2007. Proving everybody can taunt somebody, Kentucky gave the "S-E-C!" to East Carolina at the 2009 Liberty Bowl. SEC pride has outgrown football. "You can imagine how grating it is when you hear the SEC chant all the time," a woman named Valorie Kondos Field remarked last year. She is UCLA's gymnastics coach.


After the national championship each year, the SEC fan rushes to message boards to make sure the three magic letters have been uttered. "No SEC chant Bama?" an LSU fan wondered after the 2010 title game. The next year, it was up to a Bama fan to ask, "Did Auburn do the SEC chant?" The South's football teams can whip anybody — this the SEC fan knows.

But he worries his neighbors will forget to remember to rub it in.


How'd we get here? It all starts with the Civil Wa… I know, I know, but, trust me, this story gets more interesting than that. After the final gun sounded on Reconstruction, northern schools had a jump start on their southern counterparts in football. (A typical score from 1890: Princeton 115, Virginia 0.) Religious critics in the South argued against the "football craze" because it was unsafe, immoral, and fundamentally a Yankee thing. To counter that, the South's colleges began the "southernize" the game. The bands played "Dixie." LSU's Tigers were named after soldiers who fought in the Civil War.


The phenomenon of southern football swagger probably dates to the 1926 Rose Bowl, when Alabama faced off with Washington. This was an accident: Alabama was invited only after several teams declined. "I've never heard of Alabama as a football team," historian Andrew Doyle quotes a Rose Bowl agent as saying. But after the Tide's three third-quarter touchdowns won the game, they became symbolic champs for the whole South. Auburn students gathered on campus to follow the game — even though Auburn and Alabama had stopped playing each other due to mutual loathing. "Alabama," Vanderbilt's coach cheered, "was our representative in fighting for us against the world."

Read the rest of the article here...

 

[XXL TideFan]

Still don't much care for yankees.

 

[jdpas29]

they can't help it, xxl. they were born that way.

 

[planomateo]

Oregon got a dose of this again against LSU. It wasn't a long SEC-SEC chant, but I'm sure if brought back feelings from the MNC letdown.

I have some Oregon friends, and they were talking up how they were gonna take down an SEC school - it wasn't about taking down LSU, it was about beating an SEC school.

 

[It Takes Eleven]

Perhaps invoking a bit of Old Hickory, namesake Western Kentucky linebacker Andrew Jackson is dismissive of Kentucky's SEC credentials:

http://www.sportsgrid.com/ncaa-foot...e-season-has-arrived-they-supposed-to-be-sec/

 

[TheVolBuster]

I love the SEC. I do. But I can't bring myself to pull for Tennessee or Auburn. Ever.


If it was Tennessee VS. University of Iraq.... I'd be on the sidelines wearing a turban chanting "la la la la la la la la la"

 

[RollTideinGA]

That sounds a lot like the spirit behind the SEC chant. And as historian Michael Oriard has shown, every South-versus-North matchup thereafter became a fantasy football Civil War.

Really? When are we going to move past this? When will people stop asking if Southerners really think they won the war or all the other stereotype crap. They all think we want to fight the civil war again and we are all racist hillbilly's.

And how many players on these teams now aren't even from the south? Ingram was from Michigan, Joe Namath was from PA, and several players have come from Cali or Texas. Heck we've got an Australian on our team. Idiots.

 

[TerryP]

I love the SEC. I do. But I can't bring myself to pull for Tennessee or Auburn. Ever.


If it was Tennessee VS. University of Iraq.... I'd be on the sidelines wearing a turban chanting "la la la la la la la la la"

Wrong football.

Really? When are we going to move past this? When will people stop asking if Southerners really think they won the war or all the other stereotype crap. They all think we want to fight the civil war again and we are all racist hillbilly's.

And how many players on these teams now aren't even from the south? Ingram was from Michigan, Joe Namath was from PA, and several players have come from Cali or Texas. Heck we've got an Australian on our team. Idiots.

Not anytime soon. The younger generation of Pac-12(?) fans are still saying "the only reason SEC has the following it does is because there is nothing else to do in the south."

I'm hijacking this post...

That's one thing that has always shocked me about statements Pac-12(?) fans have made about. One of the things I loved about living in Alabama, specifically Tuscaloosa, was how close it was to EVERYTHING.

Consider this. People take two hours to get around CITIES like Los Angeles.

On the other hand we are a few hours away from New Orleans, ATL, the beach in more than one location, Memphis, Nashville...

Tell me we don't have things to do down south. I won't even venture into the golf courses, fishing, etc. You know what we don't have? Freakin' waves.

Rant is now off...

 

[RollTideinGA]

Not anytime soon. The younger generation of Pac-12(?) fans are still saying "the only reason SEC has the following it does is because there is nothing else to do in the south."

I hear ya. My wife has family from Cali and the first time they met me they made some stereotypical comments about southerners. They are pot heads so I don't place much value in what they think.