The End of the SEC as We Know It

SEC Needlepoint Belt Pattern, via The Eye of the Needle.

Last night, as my beau and I took slightly drunken phone calls from friends in NOLA and muddled through Facebook timelines filled with check-ins at Mother's and Cafe du Monde, I was hit with an oddly sentimental thought: This is the last year for the true Southeastern Conference.  

Then, oddly enough, I wondered what would happen to those SEC belts that everybody makes for their beaus and grandfathers to wear to the Tournament.  Now, Jenksie and I have made more than our fair share of needlepoint belts over the years.  I'm sure we'll be up to the challenge of whipping up new ones that say "Mizzou" and "Aggies"for anyone who needs them for next year's trip to Nashville.  But, on a sentimental level, it seems that the upcoming changes to the Conference render the SEC a little less special.

SEC Needlepoint belt, via Smathers and Branson.

Now, there have certainly been changes to the SEC before.  Sometimes, it's hard to remember that South Carolina and Arkansas have only been in the conference for twenty-one years.  But, the beauty of the SEC has always been the fact that you could roadtrip to any of the member schools over a long weekend.  Whether it's crazy-assed UK basketball fans showing up at every basketball game ever or equally crazy LSU and Bama fans parking their Winnebagos in the Virginia Lot on Tuesday or Wednesday, it's a roadtrip conference.  It makes the geographic distance and chartered planes of the Big Ten seem so impersonal and antiseptic. It is the conference of the Southeastern United States.  And, I don't care what Southern Living says, Missouri and Texas are not Southern States.  (Neither is Maryland, Southern Living, but that's largely irrelevant to this argument.)

Via Wikipedia.

Call me old-fashioned, or a traditionalist, but I've had a hard time even getting used to the dissolution of the East and West Divisions for basketball.  (I'd argue that it does absolutely nothing to abolish them, as the East will always dominate hoops.)  I still just can't get used to the idea of such foreign words as "Mizzou" and "Aggies" in our tightly-knit little conference.  I know that serious financial considerations have reshaped the entire infrastructure of college sports, and that we have to regroup to stay viable.  I know that it's an easy five hour drive from Western Kentucky to Columbia, and that there have to be enough Wildcat faithful in East Texas to color College Station blue for a couple of days every year.  I even know that, after a few years, these additions to the conference will seem as natural and organic as Arkansas or Carolina.

But, for this remainder of this weekend, I love the SEC just as it is.