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The Big 10 v. the SEC: Can't we all just get along
11/01/05
by Clay

No two conferences in America hate each other more than the Southeastern Conference and the Big 10. I learned this in college when I traveled north of the Mason-Dixon line and experienced bromides like these each Saturday afternoon: “The teams down south would be so much better if they could afford shoes.” “Seriously, people in Mississippi they have outhouses, right?” And worst and most grating of all, “Charles Woodson deserved the Heisman Trophy over Peyton Manning.” I never thought I would get over my anger at the University of Michigan…and then I went and married a Michigan grad. Sometimes irony is knowing that in the event of divorce half your assets are heading back to Ann Arbor. It’s ok though, really, the band played Rocky Top at our wedding in Michigan.

Notwithstanding the détente in my own life, the tides of anger and retribution have not lessened over the years between the two conferences. Instead, the hate has continued to boil producing a proverbial witches brew of callous insults, intended and perceived slights, and head-to-head match-ups that only materialize in bowl season. (For purposes of this column Kentucky and Indiana’s football “rivalry” is being discarded.) In this column, I come not to bury the discord, but to inflame it. Without further ado, here are eleven arguments and counter-arguments on behalf of both conferences to anger everyone and settle nothing. The Big 10 gets five and the SEC gets five and I get one to decide it all for eternity.

The Big 10

1. All SEC schools cheat. This is completely inaccurate. Only the following SEC schools have been on probation in the past twenty years: Alabama, Kentucky, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi State, Mississippi, Tennessee, South Carolina, Auburn, Arkansas, and LSU. Vanderbilt has not. So clearly this whole cheating argument is blown way out of proportion. Also the SEC has been penalized by the NCAA for rules violations 43 times since the early 1950s which is more than any other athletic conference. But that’s unfair because most athletic conferences did not exist in the 1950s so of course the SEC is going to have more.

2. Most SEC players cannot read. Again, this is just not true. Most SEC running backs cannot read but they hardly make up the entire team.

3. SEC coaches are crybabies. Before Urban Meyer arrived this accusation was laughable. Now it is utterly true. Utah can have him back and Meyer can cry until the Great Salt Lake returns to normal levels.

4. SEC schools exist almost entirely for football, ergo culture, learning, and literacy never make it inside the doublewides. Again, simply not true, the SEC has Vanderbilt. Also many SEC fans live in singlewides and there is not room for much of anything in a singlewide.

5. SEC fans always argue there is a northern bias. The northern bias is this, our schools are better than you at academics, intelligence of students, facilities and football. Ouch. Who’s talking about academics, intelligence of students, and facilities?

SEC Arguments

6. There is a northern bias. Of course there is a northern bias. It exists because newspapers and internet columns are written for the literate. If everyone still communicated with hollers from one valley to another things would be equal.

7. Big 10 girls are ugly. Admittedly this has nothing to do with football and is blatant name-calling. Also, I am not the best judge of this question because I am married to a Big 10 girl and would like to continue share the same bed with her. Having said that, this is the only argument SEC schools ever make outside of football so its universal status may have some credence.

8. Big 10 players are slow and fat and work in Detroit factories producing manhole covers when they graduate. Is manhole covers a double entendre here, even I’m not sure? This is not true. Some Big 10 players go to work in meat-packing plants when they graduate.

9. Big 10 schools are pompous and arrogant, no SEC school calls itself “THE anything” like THE Ohio State University. This is a ridiculous argument, the THE is very important. Otherwise THE Ohio State University might be confused with plain ole Ohio State University which everyone knows is a school filled with students with small penises.

10. The Big 10 actually has eleven members so don’t lecture us about reading and writing when arithmetic is clearly not your conferences strength. If SEC schools ever added calculators and put down the abacus, you would be aware that we are eternally waiting for Notre Dame to return our whispered words of endearment, then we’ll be the Big 12. Plus the A-10 is much worse, it actually has fourteen members. But Big 11, what kind of idiot chooses to go with eleven numbers when there is another option otherwise.

11. And now to decide things for all eternity. These conferences are mirror images of one another: Each conference is made up of all state schools with one private school (Vanderbilt and Northwestern), has huge football stadiums with raucous alumni and fan bases, has athletic departments that are money making machines beyond compare, has players who consistently fill the rosters of NFL teams, even have the colors of the teams duplicating themselves, and finally both have fans who would sooner marry a first cousin than lose to a rival…ok, I guess in the SEC this isn’t even a tough decision. Ultimately these similarities are much more grating than differences. For instance no one fan of the SEC or Big 10 lies awake at night thinking, “My team could run wild if they played in the MAC, or Mountain West, or Conference USA, or the Big East. In the end, if you can lie down at night with the enemy (as I do) you find out that cross-pollination can be a good thing. Sometimes you even think, maybe a football fan can even appreciate both conferences for what they bring to the college football smorgasbord. Of course then you come to your senses. I still hate the Big 10.

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