Why We Can't Chant "S! E! C!"
It means too much to do so.
[this post was first published on Two Homers And A Realist]
Fans of Southeastern Conference teams have a well-earned reputation of chanting for their conference, “S-E-C”, quite often when playing teams from opposing conferences. This is instead of simply chanting for themselves (e.g., “Roll Tide!”, “Geaux Tigers”, etc.).
People outside the conference find this some combination of weird, misplaced, and annoying. The annoyance comes because it is heard generally when the SEC opponent they are playing is beating them.
The weird and misplaced part is because it doesn’t come natural to non-SEC teams to root for the conference affiliation rather than themselves. Frankly, it is a bit weird no matter how you spin it. But it also makes sense. Or at least it did in a way that may no longer hold.
It is to the credit of the SEC as a organization that they’ve built such cross-member and general brand support. Other conferences envy this despite their open disdain for it from the SEC. The SEC’s motto is “It just means more”, and whether you like it or not, it quite simply does. The team/fan support for conference brethren makes for a strong alliance.
Of course it is not quite so straightforward, and I think it gets more complicated going forward. I’m going to focus on football where this all-for-one-and-one-for-all attitude has been more prevalent. The fact that it isn’t as alive in other sports should lend credence to my theory of what changes may come for football since football has been structured differently than these other sports.
Up until now, every team was on more or less the same page regarding support for the conference even though the benefits were not evenly distributed. While in their best interest, the elites of the conference had less to gain from conference promotion. Alabama and Georgia recently, LSU and Florida previously, and others periodically could stand on their own. They toed the line to the extent they were a team player and because they were benefiting from the support of the others. The deep middle and bottom of the conference latched onto the message and held fast because they benefited by supporting the elites (and others when those middling teams had success). Everyone had something to gain and little to lose.
This is easy to understand. It makes the conference more money and prestige to have all the teams thought of as better than they might really be. It puts everyone in a better position for post-season bowl placement especially in the college football playoff (CFP). Beyond this direct benefit, the conference as a whole, the entity doing the contract negotiations, could command more TV money, etc.
When elites like Alabama and Georgia were competing against each other for spots in the CFP, it was only through direct competition—playing each other on the field. When they weren’t directly competing, it was in their overall net best interest for the other elites to succeed. It helped them if the other was doing well. OU and Texas fans know this all to well in the form of whether or not to root for the hated rival (Texas/OU).
Back in the Big 12 it was probably to OU’s net benefit for Texas to win nonconference games and even to be the other elite team in the conference defeating all other opponents. No other team commands as much national respect, and a win or loss to Texas simply looked better when Texas was succeeding.1 Regardless of who it was, a conference benefits by having a couple of elite teams rather than a bunch of (only) above average performers—most critically in getting into the CFP.
Now with the expanded 12-team CFP, all that has been disrupted to one degree or another. And the effect on the elite teams is most stark.
There are two paths now for entry into the CFP:
Win so much there is no denying you.
Be relatively good enough that they choose to include you.
Yes, these are essentially the same thing, but there is a subtle distinction. In the first case you just win all your games or in the least win the conference championship assuring your inclusion. In the second case you need to be the cleanest dirty shirt. And there is an extra element of strategy here.
While all the teams vying for selection aside from the most obvious or mandatory (conference champs) are competing against each other, there is within this an intra-conference competition. The SEC and Big 10 will get multiple teams into the CFP year after year, but they won’t get too many. Specifically, they won’t get as many as five and maybe not four in most years.
In this regard the third-best team in the SEC is more likely to get in than the fourth-best team in the Big 10, and vice versa. And this is true even if the fourth-best Big 10 team is otherwise better than the third-best SEC team, and vice versa. If a team is fourth much less fifth in its conference, the team better be extremely good to have a chance of selection. So the easy course to follow is to be better than the other teams in your own conference. Therefore, elite teams now have a strong reason to root against the other elite teams in the conference in all of their games. It is the reverse of the OU-Texas dilemma I sketched out above.
This presents contradictory incentives among teams within a conference. While the elite now might feel compelled to root against their elite brethren, they still support the mediocre middle. In fact their support for them is even greater because they want them to beat the other elites. The middling teams will continue to be torchbearers for the elite uniformly since the elites are a proxy for middling teams’ own success.
Pushing back in the other direction but only meekly, money still encourages all to support the tribe and to support the better conference team in each matchup. It would be better for the conference to have four rather than three or three rather than two teams make the CFP. But good luck telling that as consolation to Texas when OU edges them out for a spot as the third team and last SEC to get in.
The bottom line is since OU’s goal is to be an elite football team, it is now in OU’s interest for the best teams in the SEC to lose. Texas beating Michigan no longer has a silver lining—at least not much of one.2 And a Mississippi State upsetting a Georgia takes on new intrigue—most likely helping other SEC elites while damaging the SEC brand slightly.
The counter to this is that Texas’ success on the field was a competitive threat in recruiting. I tended to discount this theory, but it is a legitimate concern.
It would still bolster the OU-Texas game itself for what that’s worth. And there are scenarios where a quality win (loss) against Texas pays the traditional dividend down the road.