| amIblue? |
05-20-2013 10:19 AM |
Interesting article about being "ethnically southern" from Outkick the Coverage. I've copied and quoted the pertinent text, which is in the middle of the post. Link to follow.
Quote:
David R. writes:
"Slive and Skipper mentioned the 'SEC' chant at football games (specifically the BCS Championship Game in January) and how it highlighted the pride we take in our conference during the SEC Network press conference. While true, as an Arkansas fan, I have to ask how long is it acceptable for the non-Alabamas, Floridas, LSUs, and/or Georgias to do this chant when we play out of conference or bowl games? I love being in the SEC, but at some point the rest of us are sort of living on the accomplishments of other schools. The proper analogy is that Alabama, LSU, and Florida are the awesome life-of-the-party members of the good frat who get all the ladies while Vandy, Kentucky, and Mississippi State are the weird guys with no friends who got a bid because their dads were members. Oh, and Auburn is the guy who helps everyone cheat on their exams. Hey-oh!"
Yeah, this is a good and valid question that I get versions of all the time.
The sad truth is that all SEC programs aren't created equal. So there's definitely some reflected glory involved in the chant. But the bigger issue is that the SEC chant isn't really about sports at its core, it's cultural.
Let me explain.
First, let's begin with the simplest explanation I can give for why the SEC chant exists -- it's because the South is an ethnicity for many Southerners. In particular, no white person in the South thinks of themselves as part of a specific ethnic group. People aren't Irish or German or British or Italian or Polish or Russian or any other European background, we're just Southern, that's our ethnicity. (Many black people also feel this way as well, it's why I've argued for Pan-Southernism in the past. Pan-Southernism refers to the fact that many Southerners instinctively root for the Southern person or team if they have no other rooting interest).
I noticed this for the first time when I went away to college in Washington, D.C. and immediately felt a kinship with any person who was from the South. I was from Nashville, it's not like Nashville and Birmingham or Atlanta or New Orleans or Charlotte are next door geographical neighbors, but when I'd meet someone from these cities, I immediately felt like I knew them, like we had something in common. They felt the same way. Honestly, every person who lives outside the South right now and is reading this knows exactly what I mean. You crave meeting other Southerners. That's because we we were all ethnically Southern.
Then I married my wife, who is from Detroit, where most white people still identify themselves based on their European background. My wife is half German and half Italian. When we started dating and I visited her family up there they asked me where my family was from. I'd never been asked this before -- we'd been Southern as long as I could remember, that was our ethnicity.
So people from the South feel as if we share a kinship with other Southerners in a way that other regions of the country don't.
Being Southern is our ethnicity.
Second, the South was a perpetual underdog for much of our history. We lost a war, we had lots of poor people, the rest of the country looked down on us, as a group we were the castoffs who weren't given respect. This extended to sports too where we always felt our teams were looked over.
Then, what happened?
Air conditioning.
Air conditioning is the SEC's oil.
It changed everything.
Suddenly everyone wanted to move here, our cities boomed, our land values exploded, our populations soared.
We weren't the underdogs anymore, but we still felt like the underdogs.
At its root the SEC chant comes from two causes: 1. the fact that all Southerners feel we share something in common and 2. the underdog mentality.
You root for the Southern team, the one you feel a kinship for because Southern is your ethnicity.
When you think of the SEC chant as more rooted in the culture of the South than the sports of the South, winning is only a part of it.
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http://www.outkickthecoverage.com/al...rk-edition.php |
