The South Has Risen
We’ve all heard of the term “The South Shall Rise Again.” The statement was probably uttered shortly after the South lost the Civil War. Jefferson Davis claims to have said it, although, knowing him, he probably lifted the line from somebody else. Well, we can now see a place where the South has indeed risen to the very top of the food chain. And that is in college football.
Plain and simply, the teams from south of the Mason-Dixon Line own college football. The SEC gets all the publicity for their eight straight BCS championships, but Southern teams in general are dominating the sport like never before.
In the last eleven years, the NCAA champions have been Alabama (3 titles), Florida (2), LSU (2), Auburn (1), Texas (1) and last year’s champion Florida State. What do they have in common? They are all from the South. (note – there might have been a USC championship in there, but they are “Southern” California after all) In other words, there is a trend going on here that deserves mentioning.
The current situation is that four of the top five teams in the latest rankings, Florida State, Alabama and Auburn (in the state of Alabama, if it wasn’t clear earlier) are all either deep South stalwarts, or Oklahoma, a bordering Southern state, are all very much in contention to be the main playoff teams in the NCAA pool this year. Eight of the top sixteen are from the SEC, for goodness sakes, not to mention the smattering of teams like Florida State, Baylor (in Texas), and two teams from the Southwesternly part of the country like UCLA and Arizona State. In other words, it is looking more and more likely that the next collegiate football champion (unless maybe Northerners Oregon, Michigan State or Notre Dame can do something about it) will be someone who speaks with a Southern accent, or at least does not speak “like a Yankee.”
Not only that, but the recruiting classes of high school athletes that comprise the pipeline for college football programs have taken a decidedly Southern turn lately in terms of who is coming up with the highest ranked classes. Every year now, it seems that Alabama, and Florida State, and LSU, and Georgia, and Florida, and lately Auburn and Oklahoma, are all getting the cream of the crop, their solid share of the best of the high school recruits to pledge to come to THEIR schools. Which of course only perpetuates the fact that the best teams of the upcoming years will probably come from these same schools that get these same “best new athletes.”
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I have a theory why football is so big in the South for both the players and the fans. I think football as a sport is the closest thing stylistically and tactically there is to the brutally aggressive version of war that was waged in The War Between The States. The kickoff, with its eleven defensive players racing across the field, the players staying in their lines in an attacking formation, charging against the enemy… it’s like a modern day, physical, but non-lethal version of Pickett’s Charge in the Battle of Gettysburg.
The way that offenses and defenses line up against each other in football is very similar to the way the opposing sides of the Blue and the Gray lined up against each other in their war. Football is a game of each side making sure that no gaps are available for the opponents to exploit. The very nature of offense vs. defense in football is for the offensive side to try to break through and create a breach in the opponent’s line and hope to exploit that opening with a running back, much the same way that armies would try to break through THEIR opponent’s line and force the enemy to break their ranks and skedaddle. Likewise, the defense tries to either contain the opponent within their structure, or to break through the offensive line and try to sack the quarterback.
Or there’s the tactic of trying to outflank the opponent by going around them and exploiting the weakness on the left or right sides of their lines, which of course is both a football and a war strategy. The passing game in football even bears a resemblance to war as an offense tries to tactically find openings in defenses and then throw to those open spots and gain territorial ground on their opponent.
The coach of a football team is like the general, coming up with the strategies, boosting up the morale, making all of the key decisions that help decide the outcome. The quarterbacks are like the general’s captains on the field, leading the troops, carrying out the battle plan. The players on the sidelines in football, sitting on the bench and waiting to get into the action are even like the reserve troops of the Blue and Gray that are also “sitting on the sidelines,” also waiting to get into the action.
Okay, so there’s a lot of things in common between the Civil War and college football. At least I think there are. But the thing that strikes me most about the similarities between them is the passion with which the fans and the players of today approach the football games that are played on Saturday afternoons. Especially those from the South. To many, these fans are as passionate about these games as they are with anything they have in their lives. And it seems like the players from the South care just a little bit more about their football than they do in the North (not saying the Northerners don’t care, just that the Southerners care more).
The successes and the dominance of Southern football teams in recent years speaks for itself. They are flat out winning the championships in college football so often now that you can honestly say they have “risen again.” These things may run in cycles, but the numbers do not lie. The North may have won the war, but the South is now winning the battles. Not just some of them. ALL of them.
