Following
Alabama’s total dominance of Notre Dame in the BCS title game, the SEC has now
won its seventh consecutive national title, cementing its absolute reign over
college football. Sportswriters have
speculated on the reasons for the conference’s supremacy, ranging from the
popularity of the sport in the South to the massive television contract that
gives its members the power to pay top dollar to hire the best coaches.
Beyond sports, however, the strength of the Southeastern Conference illuminates
key shifts in the country with implications beyond the football field.
It
may come as a surprise to those living south of the Mason-Dixon Line that
college football started in the Northeast during the late 19th
century, conceived in part as a way for the children of the Eastern
Establishment to establish their manhood. Theodore Roosevelt and others
embraced it as a way to toughen a generation too young to have experienced combat in
the Civil War. By the 1920s, college football had established itself in
the South, eventually becoming the region’s passion and most popular sport.
The
rise of the SEC reflects, among other things, the shift in population away from
the Northeast and toward the Sunbelt since the Second World War.
Weapons production and the expansion of military bases in the region during the
war brought new people to the area and this trend continued as Cold War defense
spending created a peacetime military establishment. Strong chairmen of
the Senate Armed Services Committee, such as Richard Russell of Georgia and
John Stennis of Mississippi, used their clout to locate bases in the region and
funnel defense contracts to local plants. The Eisenhower Administration
started the interstate highway system during the 1950s, which strengthened
transportation in the relatively poor region, paving the way for population
growth.
With
an improved infrastructure and lower labor costs as an attraction, manufacturing
and other businesses left the unionized Northeast and Midwest for the nonunion
South. Foreign companies followed, with BMW, Mercedes, and Nissan
building plants in South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi, respectively.
Over the last half-century, economic differences between the South and the rest
of the country have narrowed considerably, with per capita incomes nearly
reaching parity.
Improved
race relations were essential to the South’s renaissance, as it was impossible
for the region to move forward economically under Jim Crow, which restrained
the potential of its black citizens. It is no coincidence that the much of the
economic growth in the area has come since the passage of the Civil Rights Act
of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, which ended legal segregation.
Indeed, business leaders in the area were often instrumental in pushing for
change, not because of a humanitarian concern, but because of an understanding
that racial disputes discouraged national and international investment.
Before
the civil rights era, Southern schools did not recruit black players and were
often unwilling to even play against integrated teams. Top black players
went to Northern conferences like the Big Ten or to historically black colleges
(HBCUs). Throughout the Jim Crow era and in its immediate aftermath,
Grambling, under head coach Eddie Robinson, was an HBCU powerhouse with players
like NFL Hall of Fame receiver Charlie Joiner and Doug Williams, the first
black quarterback to win a Super Bowl. SEC teams squandered
hometown talent, as the University of Mississippi eschewed recruiting Walter
Payton, who later became the NFL’s all-time leading rusher. Payton stayed
in state to play at Jackson State, another historically black college.
After
the passage of the civil rights laws, the SEC gradually embraced recruiting
black players. Vanderbilt and Kentucky became the first schools to do so
in 1966 and eventually the legendary Alabama coach Bear Bryant revived the
Crimson Tide in the 1970s by aggressively pursuing African American
athletes. In the early years of the post-Jim Crow era, some black players
were likely reluctant to play for teams in the South because of strong memories
of the violence of the civil rights era. Indeed, I believe the dominance of the
conference today is in part due to the fading memories of the upheavals of the
1950s and 60s, as African American athletes are now more enthusiastic about
playing in the Old Confederacy. In particular, the success of many black
quarterbacks in the SEC over the last decade would have seemed unlikely a
generation ago.
Today,
the SEC is the top football conference and the South is the fastest-growing
region of the country, both economically and in terms of population
growth. Of course, the gains have been uneven, as Virginia, North
Carolina, and Georgia are more prosperous than Mississippi, Alabama, and
Arkansas. While race relations have improved and black players dominate
the field, some barriers still remain. As of 2012, there have been only
three black head coaches in the history of the conference.
