I saw some Gator fans having some angst about who to root for in the Georgia-Michigan Playoff semifinal last week. It’s a moot point now that the game has already happened, but I think I can offer some pointers for the next time something of the like comes up.
You should, of course, root for whoever you feel like. I don’t care who others root for, and it doesn’t have an impact on the outcome of games anyway. However it does feel good to know how to strategically pull for teams, so that is what this newsletter is about.
The primary dilemma was this: no Gator likes to root for Georgia for obvious reasons, but wasn’t there some kind of obligation to pull for the SEC member in the game? Especially against a Big Ten team led by a guy as obnoxious as Jim Harbaugh?
I have no advice regarding the khaki wearing, milk chugging head coach of the Wolverines. On the rest of it, though, you could’ve rooted for Michigan worry-free.
I’m sure there were some people consistently rooting for conference mates for many decades before I was born, so I won’t pretend to write an authoritative history. However the current Conference Wars date back to the mid-2000s, a time when I was attending UF and just starting my blogging career.
The inciting event was the BCS selection process for the 2004 season. An unusual occurrence happened: three different teams from power conferences (then called BCS automatic qualifying conferences, or AQ for short) finished the regular season undefeated. Only two could play for the national title.
In an outcome that seems impossible today, the Pac-10 and Big 12 teams made the championship game and the SEC team got left out.
USC was the clear No. 1 team, coming off of splitting the 2003 national title as the AP Poll champ. It went 12-0 with an average win of 37-13. Oklahoma was No. 2, and it had a similar average win margin of 36-14.
The SEC reverted to old habits after Steve Spurrier left for the NFL and NCAA sanctions chased out Hal Mumme. It went solidly back to its old run-and-defense ways, and Tommy Tuberville’s Auburn was an exemplar of the era. The Tigers went 12-0 but with an average win of 33-11. It doesn’t sound that different, but the points scored average is padded by big numbers against 3-8 Mississippi State (43 points), 6-6 Louisiana Tech (52), and 2-9 Kentucky (42).
At the bare minimum, AU was less flashy with running backs Cadillac Williams and Ronnie Brown leading the way. USC was in its modern heyday with soon-to-be Heisman recipients Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush, while Oklahoma had the reigning Heisman winner in Jason White and ’04 runner up Adrian Peterson.
USC’s dominant 55-19 win over OU did little to quiet down those who thought Auburn had been robbed. At the very least, it seemed likely that the Tiger defense would’ve put up a better fight and kept the Trojans from hitting half a hundred. I’m not sure anyone who wasn’t guzzling the War Eagle Kool-Aid thought that AU could’ve actually won the game, but they might’ve put up a better fight.
Lost in some folks’ memories is the fact that 2004 was the first year of a new BCS formula. There used to be strength of schedule and quality win components, but they were removed from the system. All that remained were the Coaches and AP Polls and computer composite ratings; after ’04 the AP withdrew and it was replaced by a poll done by Harris Interactive.
The main points being argued in Auburn’s favor largely were about those things that were dropped: strength of schedule and quality wins. The Tigers had a win over 10-2 Georgia and gave 10-3 Tennessee two of its losses by way of a regular season win and a rematch victory in Atlanta. USC had three similarly good wins against 10-3 Virginia Tech, 10-2 Cal, and 9-3 Arizona State and wasn’t a point of contention.
However Oklahoma had only one victory over an impressive opponent, a 12-0 win over 11-1 Texas. The next-best AQ opponents the Sooners played were an 8-4 Texas Tech team and 7-5 squads Oklahoma State and Texas A&M. The slate paled in comparison to what Auburn faced.
Auburn was also third in the computer ratings, but that didn’t matter so much. The formula’s human component made up two-thirds of the weighting, and people can be lobbied in a way that algorithms cannot be.
So, a campaign slowly grew over the course of 2005 and 2006 to emphasize just how much of a gauntlet the SEC was. This is when a lot of fans of SEC member schools became SEC fans. I also believe this was around when the S-E-C chant went from something employed in the waning minutes by the victorious side in Atlanta to something used against vanquished foes from other AQ leagues.
It was a decentralized effort, but it didn’t take long for fans of every SEC team to catch on. It definitely was A Thing in the college football blogosphere, something I was a small part of in 2006. I don’t know how influential that was with actual poll voters since anyone over the age of about 35 thought at the time that all bloggers were losers who lived in their parents’ basements.
But between a small blog influence and a lot of sports talk radio callers, message board posters, ESPN College GameDay sign makers, and letters-to-the-editor writers, the meme got out there even before Twitter was born or Facebook opened up beyond college students.
It paid off, too, with Florida edging out Michigan for the spot opposite Ohio State in the 2006 BCS title game. It wasn’t a direct parallel to 2004, but the argument was largely the same. In fact, it was that debate that formalized the “best vs. most deserving” frame that’s been in use ever since.
Florida trouncing the Buckeyes sparked a seven-year run of SEC members winning national titles. The 2011 season, when an LSU-Alabama rematch sparked the Playoff’s creation, probably was the point at which the SEC cemented itself as generally the best and toughest conference.
Had Michigan knocked off Georgia last week, it wouldn’t have dented the SEC’s prestige enough to cause a future league member to be left out of the Playoff in a coin-flip scenario. Remember, that was the whole point: to make sure SEC teams would always get the benefit of the doubt in relation to the national championship structure. Besides, with Alabama having defeated Cincinnati earlier that day, the SEC already had a representative in the championship round.
It is still useful for now to have non-Florida SEC teams in title contention. It’s an investment in the future, just as caping for Auburn was in 2004-05. Those years’ Gator teams weren’t going to win any trophies, but the momentum of the campaign sure came in handy in 2006.
It will be useful to see Bama and UGA begin to stumble, depending on when you think Billy Napier might put the Gators in actual title contention. UF being on the rise while those two start to fall will help win recruiting battles. That’s a strategic calculation I’ll leave as an exercise to the reader for now.
But to sum it up, you don’t have to root solely for conference pride anymore. The SEC won the Conference Wars, and there’s no trend out there that suggests it’ll lose its primacy. In fact, the SEC adding Oklahoma and Texas sparked an ill-defined “alliance” among the ACC, Big Ten, and Pac-12 in fear of the SEC’s growing power.
In other words, there is no reason you need to root for Georgia if the thought repulses you unless the Bulldogs winning directly helps Florida in a concrete way like in the East standings or something. You can feel completely free of that obligation.