In the Southeastern Conference, football is more than just a sport, it’s a lifestyle. It’s a cardinal sin to miss a game and sacrilegious to root for anyone but your home team. As a proud Florida Gator, I’ve seen these traditions play out for years. However, for newbies, college football can be a lot. Consider this article your crash course for all things SEC…Real Headcoaches of the South, if you will!
Get-back Season: Ole Miss & LSU
A lot of the buzz surrounding the Southeastern Conference this season is due to bad blood between the Ole Miss Rebels (University of Mississippi) and the Louisiana State University Tigers. It all centers around LSU’s head coach, Lane Kiffin. Kiffin was the head coach at Ole Miss for six seasons. He fared well, consistently bringing in 10-win seasons and propelling the Rebels into the conversation for consistent playoff contention.Â
However, Kiffin had a wandering eye. He wanted more. More money, more resources for NIL (…financial incentives) and more of a “challenge” than Ole Miss could offer. At least that’s his claim. Ole Miss fans and players have a…different account of events. To them, Coach Kiffin silently dipped mid-season (yes, literally right before Ole Miss’ playoff run) to chase a $91 million check.
Understandably, there was really no love lost between the two groups. With tensions running high, the two teams were set to face off in THE game of week 3.. LSU, with their padded roster and highly-touted defense, were many people’s favorites for the win. I personally always root for the underdog, so I wanted Ole Miss to win. And guess who pulled out the dub? The Rebels, of course, in storybook fashion. This game was an all-time classic, a Trinidad Chambliss masterclass, and a gut-wrenching defeat for dear old Lane Kiffin. To me, it was good ole karmic retribution and an illustration of the age-old lesson: The grass isn’t always greener on the other side.
Gator Boys Stay Hot…and Cold?
Like I said before, I am a PROUD Florida Gator. Our men’s basketball team just won the natty, our gymnastics and softball teams are consistently ranked in the top 10 and volleyball is having a killer start to the season. But, football…let’s just say we haven’t had the best luck. Until now, that is.Â
After the firing of Billy Napier, I, like a lot of other Gator fans, worried that we were going to pick up a different coach to do more of the same: 6 win seasons, beating FSU and barely scraping into bowl-eligibility. However, Jon Sumrall seems to be a great pickup. He won big at his past schools, Tulane and Troy, so big that he has the fifth-highest winning percentage of all active head coaches in FBS football. The guy’s been a winner everywhere he’s been, and at first, UF was no different. For the first time since pre-COVID (aka forever ago), we started the season 4-0. Yes, two of those wins were against pay-to-play teams, but ask Notre Dame and NIU how quickly games like that can get interesting. And the other two were huge, in-conference wins against Auburn and Ole Miss.Â
We were doing so well, I should’ve known it was too good to be true. Coach Sumrall did. He’s literally said in multiple press conferences that we’re yet to play our best football, and well, that couldn’t be more clear. As quickly as I got excited about Florida football, my hopes were stomped out by back-to-back embarrassments against Missouri and South Carolina. Can we get back on the wagon and end the season above .750? Who knows? This season has been full of surprises,Â
SuperMarioÂ
The SEC loves a nickname. Tyrann Mathieu was “Honey Badger”, Johnny Manziel was “Johnny Football” and now, we have another on our hands: Kamario Taylor, aka SuperMario. Taylor is the sophomore starting quarterback for Mississippi State and he’s sure living up to his nickname. He’s a true dual-threat QB, with 1450 passing yards and nearly 200 rushing yards across the first five games of the season. His coach, Jeff Lebby, had super high praise for him, telling ESPN that he literally has no ceiling. Mississippi State fans are rightfully excited about this young star, drawing comparisons between him and legendary former Bulldogs like Dak Precott and Nick Fitzgerald. However, the interesting part about the conversation surrounding Kamario for me isn’t his elite gameplay. It’s more so the Internet’s assumptions about what elite gameplay this year means for next year.
In the age of the transfer portal and NIL, it’s become a recurring song-and-dance that when an athlete plays well at a smaller or less nationally-recognized school, they transfer to a bigger and better school the next year for more visibility and money. Logically, this makes perfect sense. D.J. Lagway and John Mateer, quarterbacks that I would personally rank far below Kamario Taylor (no shade), had NIL valuations of upwards of $3 million dollars while Taylor’s sits at around $1.5 million. This discrepancy may be enough to tempt most people, but not Kamario. He genuinely feels at home at Mississippi State, having grown up less than 40 miles from Starkville, and shut down transfer portal talk at several press conferences. But, the fact that we’re going back and forth about this is kind of sad, no? The season hasn’t even hit the halfway mark and we’re having pseudo-contract negotiations for next year.Â
Football is literally an American marvel. I could write an entire essay on the sociological intertwining of the modern South and football. Or, rather, the health-related implications of a sport that is borderline barbaric by design. And I might eventually, but not today. Today, I just want to talk about football as a function of pop culture. College athletics, especially football, holds such a dynamic place in our society. The atmosphere, the drama, the highs and lows… there’s truly nothing like it.
PS: If you love the drama side of football, watch Last Chance U on Netflix. It follows “D1 bouncebacks”, athletes that get kicked out of Division 1 football programs and enter JUCO football to try and play their way back up. It’s a Greg Whitley production, the guy behind the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders show and “CHEER,” so you know it’ll be good.Â