See, now I get it.
It took the impending death of college football as we know it via conference realignment to really crystallize for me exactly why the "S-E-C!" chant pisses me off, so I guess I owe the Southeastern Conference and everyone in it a big ol' thank you.
This is helpful for me, because for so long I held internal doubts as to just how virtuous my irritation at a display of conference pride was, and now I know that the way I feel is entirely justified on grounds that are pure and good and correct.
And I'll get to those, but I want to start with a quick thought experiment.
The Ohio State/Michigan rivalry is fading (please finish reading this sentence before going straight to the comments to tell me I'm wrong, thanks), but that it retains so much of its energy after two straight decades of complete and utter dominance on the part of the Buckeyes is proof positive that The Game is still very much A Thing. And a huge part of that is because you have two clearly defined fanbases that are diametrically opposed. Red versus blue, slobs versus snobs, Bang mixed with vodka versus water mixed with a slice of cucumber.
I don't need to go into the litany of ways that Ohio State and Michigan fans choose to define themselves, but these are two of the most easily recognizable brands in college football because they exist in opposition to each other. The average college football fan thinks "Ohio State" and imagines something completely different than when they think "Michigan" and that's exactly the point.
Now for the thought experiment: How far apart are Ann Arbor and Columbus?
Roughly 160 miles. That's it! This is not a galactic distance! Culturally, meteorologically, spiritually, geographically, demographically, metaphysically, whatever, outside of sports there really isn't a whole hell of a lot of difference between them. Absent a Michigan hat, your average Ann Arborean isn't going to have trouble navigating actual real life in Columbus. They are not worlds apart, which is why we rely on a carefully curated mythology of differences and grievances so potent that they're immediately obvious to the rest of college sports.
Is it bullshit? Of course! It's all bullshit; at their core, most people in Ohio are probably pretty much like most people in Michigan. But this is artisanal, handcrafted, fun bullshit meant to last generations and act as a foundation to build a rivalry on top of.
Which is how it should be. Individual college football teams and rivalries develop an incredibly weird and obtuse cultural language over time that makes it the most entertaining sport in the country. Words cannot describe how happy it makes me that Ohio State has a wooden turtle rivalry trophy.
The SEC has traditions and rivalries of their own, of course, but as a whole their conference likes to be seen as the most basic element of college football, hellbent on distilling everything about the conference into three letters, chanted over and over again into the void. Whenever I hear "S-E-C!" I think of a giant sepia blob engulfing everything cool and weird in college football while the townsfolk root for it to gobble up even more.
That continues with conference expansion. Texas and Oklahoma will find the money better in the SEC versus the Big 12, but they'll also have to learn to deal with being ice-nined into the "not Alabama" part of the It Just Means More Conference if they don't find themselves making College Football Playoff noise on a regular basis. And maybe that's their just deserts, as the Longhorns and Sooners have cast a shadow over their Big 12 compatriots for a long, long time. The more conferences expand, the less people will want to pay attention to the teams not at the very top of the standings.
We need less of that.
What makes college football so much fun is the entire ecosystem of goofy crap that we discover and enjoy from August through January, and every team (from San Diego State to Toledo to Ohio State) deserves the spotlight from time to time.
The enemy to this platonic ideal is a single-minded pursuit of ratings and clicks at the expense of all else. The expansion of the playoff will help combat that somewhat, but the expansion of conferences might make the distinctions between the haves and have-nots even more apparent than they already were.
One solution is to encourage every program to ramp up their out of conference scheduling as much as possible, both in terms of opponent quality and opponent uniqueness. Take the show far, far down the road. Don't be content with whatever directional school is in your backyard; it won't kill a southern team to venture north of the Mason-Dixon line, and Big Ten teams might benefit from heading out west from time to time.
The goal here should be to preserve and share the whole of the wild world of college football, because if we'd rather ignore that in favor of sweet sweet mega-conference cash we might as well just watch the NFL.
