You'd have to be a fan of an SEC team to understand. Even though we win consistently, all the media puppet heads talk about the "Big 10" and those ridiculous scores of 41 to 41 ... while SEC teams keep the scores lower because we have good defenses, passing and running. So we kinda feel like the underdogs even though we know we're great. Maybe you should look and see how many Gators went pro, especially those who played with Tebow. But enuf about that ... it's not "a Jersey thing" but "an SEC thing".
JaxSuzy -> while I understand your passion 'We' is used several times like you are the Borg are a collective and not a 'team'. I'd understand if you go to a college that feels the need to roll football out for boosters, but the SEC is like a quarter of the college 'universe' so to speak with the amount of teams and most are in non pro-football related states and areas so little or no competition.. Again it must be like arguing religion - It's not like a certain team has rolled off like 6 straight championships .. its just a division.
Sports fans have a variety of personalities that cover the full spectrum, from killing each other (European soccer) to being friends that tailgate together and/or have family members going to different schools. With SEC schools, particularly since we have been dominating sports so much this decade, we are friends first while being fierce competitors, full well knowing we are competing in GAMES. So for many of us, when our favorite team doesn't make the 'playing for the championship' cut, it is an easy jump to pull for one of our conference brothers or sisters. Maybe it's a southern thing if that dynamic doesn't exist among colleges in other areas of the country. As far as the NFL is concerned, I can understand why the 'root for the division' dynamic is different, however personally I want every team MY team plays to win all their games, particularly in my division EXCEPT when playing MY team. That reduces the 'you won't have won IF' potential of my team's opponents' fans. In other words, that would be a total smack down. That rarely happens though. Shoot for the bulls eye and take what you get, is how I think about it.
A lot of it has grown out of the conference era, because in state rivals are often in different conferences. Florida State made a living pancaking the ACC all through the 90's, and its rival Florida had to also play Alabama, LSU, Tennessee, etc. So the smack talk on the internet evolved towards emphasizing that playing an SEC schedule was a lot harder on a championship run than playing an ACC schedule. I'm sure if you can try, you can imagine this evolving. Same thing goes for Clemson and South Carolina. Georgia and Georgia Tech. Lots of radio chatter on the internet about the relative strengths of the conference. Then it went and got really validated a lot in the BCS era -- with the SEC taking the last 6 BCS championships, with four differnent teams, the crowing continued. In particular, in 2006, remember the cry for a rematch between Ohio State and Michigan? People were saying Florida did not belong on the field with Ohio State (because Florida had been pretty pedestrian at times during its SEC conference play). Then Florida blew Ohio State off the field, in the trenches.
It's different in most college sports. BC won't root for BU and vice versa in the frozen four even though they are in the same conference. Georgetown won't root for Nova and vice versa and etc in the Big East. UNC and Duke, yeah right. It's only the SEC in football, and MAYBE any small conference schools. Most big conferences in college sports don't root for other members. Small conferences I understand to build legitimacy of the conference. But yeah, it's a strange phenomenon I don't understand with the SEC.
Remarker, Bannon and DisplacedFan, ya'll said it better than I could. I'm sure it does seem strange, Gastineau, but if the Gators don't make it to the BCC championship I'd even root for GA Bulldogs if they were in the BCC - and I hate em. Weird, I know.
