A Jersey Guy: SEC: It just means SO MUCH more

For much of the country, Monday night's CFP national championship match-up between Alabama and Georgia will be:

A. A regional rematch between a pair of Southeastern Conference football powers

B. Too regional in scope to merit much attention

C. Another piece of evidence that the the CFP 4-team playoff has to be expanded.

D. The pairing of the two best teams in college football

All of the above are true to some extent, although dismissing the game because of its regional aspect is a mistake.

As the SEC proudly promotes, football just means more.

And that is the unfortunate aspect for people who merely watch three plus hours of college football on Monday night in Indianapolis and then click off the image.

Having covered college football fort almost 40 years and having made many trips south to do it, this Jersey Guy can say with a great deal of certainty that college football fans in such consensus cfb hot beds as State College, Pa, Columbus, Ohio, and South Bend Indiana really have very little idea of what the SEC football experience is on a daily, weekly and sometimes year round basis, especially on game days or nights.

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He is known through out the South as Mr. College Football, a fitting description for my friend and TMG colleague Tony Barnhart, who has covered college football for 46 years at various outlets throughout the South as well as nationally.

""More than a game,'' said Barhart with a laugh when asked to describe SEC football. "It's a way of life.''

Which brought Mr. CFB to one of his favorite topics: Telling SEC stories.

"It was in 2003,'' said Barnhart. "I got this call from Archie, who invited me to their tailgate party at The Grove,.

For the Southern readers of this story not much more needs to be said.

Archie in the South needs no further introduction. Legendary former Ole Miss QB Archie Manning is the patriarch of the Manning family, which is true southern aristocracy, producing QB II and QB III in Peyton and Eli Manning, as well as Archie's grandson Arch who may be the most highly recruited high school QB in history before he graduates in the spring of 2023.

The Grove is the gathering place on game days in Oxford, Miss, an enclave of pristine beauty decorated casual opulence in tail gate parties.

"It was Eli's last home game at Ole Miss and they were playing an LSU team coached by NIck Saban (who would win his first national championship that season),.'' said Barnhart. ""I wasn't going to miss that one.''

The Grove is just Ole Miss's focal point on game day

Throughout the SEC, there are places and events which transcend three and a half hours of college football.

I remember covering one of my first SEC game when I was working at The Dallas Morning News in 1982.

It was a horizontal rain day at Auburn and I was following the usual sportswriter's protocol of arriving 3 hours before kickoff (to avoid dealing with traffic or crowd issues) and looking in amazement at a nearly packed Jordan-Hare Stadium, almost formally dressed, covered by rain gear patiently waiting for kick off.

I remember taking a drive early on game day (kickoff was that night) in Knoxville, watching a line of cars backed up for a quarter mile on the highway at a Church's Fried Chicken outlet. Tennessee fans, not wanting to partake of the more elegant and expensive offering of Fried Catfish at Cahoun's on the Tennessee River, were stocking up for their tailgate parties.

There are places such as The Waysider in downtown Tuscaloosa, which was the favorite breakfast haunt of iconic Bama coach Paul Bear Bryant, that are also game day focal points.

Or watching the RVs arrive in the parking lots at Alabama on Wednesday afternoon for a Saturday night game.

When COVID 19 threatened to shut down much of college football in 2020, the only statement of absolute certainty was that the SEC would play football that fall, with or without any other conference participation.

SEC football interest is not blind cult loyalty.

You still have to win.

Take the success at Georgia, in the past under a Dooley and more recently under Kirby Smart, who has turned the Dawgs into a perennial Top 5 program.

Dooley went through a rough (.500) patch midway through his Hall of Fame coaching career, which produced Georgia's last national championship in college football 42 years ago.

""There was some talk that Coach Dooley had to go,'' said Barnhart, a Georgia grad, with a laugh of disbelief. ""And Mark Richt averaged nearly 10 wins a year here, but it wasn't the right 10 wins (SEC titles or wins against Alabama or Florida) and he was bone because Kirby Smart was available and would have gone to South Carolina.

The interest in college football is not limited to the SEC. It is just part of southern culture.

I remember a story that former Alabama and Tampa Bay and New York Giant head coach Ray Perkins told me about his first few months coaching at Arkansas State

Perkins worked his way into the core group of Arkansas State supporters by joining a morning breakfast group in downtown Jonesboro, where the problems of the world, state, community and Arkansas State fodtball were discussed and often solved--at least among the group.

But as the season opener approached and it was clear that Arkansas State football was not an easy fix, one of the elders asked Perkins a pointed question.

"Coach, you got a dog?""

Perkins, filled with 18 hour days, shook his head,

"A dog?'' he said. ""I' don't have time for any dog. I'm never home.''

The elder looked at Perkins with a weary sigh, ""Coach, when you get your ass beat 55-10 week after week, the only friendly face you are going to see in this town is that dog.''

Football just means more in the SEC and South?.

Yes, it does.