Nothing else is quite like fans’ passion for SEC
Football adds zest to lives
College football passion exists in all corners of this country, but only the Southeastern Conference has developer John “Thunder” Thornton, donating $1 million to the University of Tennessee in exchange for a sprint onto the field with the Volunteers before their 1995 homecoming game.
Only the SEC has Lance Smith of Antioch, a Vanderbilt fan so boisterous UT fans burned “Go Vols” into his front yard as revenge after the Commodores upset the Vols in 2005. Only the SEC has, among the millions who attend and watch its football games each season, super fans who become famous.
Only the SEC has eight of the past 10 national championships and head coaches who made an average of $4.3 million last year (nearly $1 million more than the coaches of any other league). Only the SEC has a TV network that produced instant success and prosperity while other conferences either struggled early with theirs (Big Ten, Pac-12) or haven’t tried at all (ACC, Big 12).
And that’s because the SEC has unrivaled fan passion, rooted in tradition and the relative exclusivity of these football teams, in areas scarce on professional alternatives. And yes, there’s an irresistible comparison to be made between the gatherings and rituals of SEC Saturdays and the Sunday services in the most spiritual region of the country.
“Easily,” said Paul Finebaum of ESPN, the SEC Network and the most
popular sports-talk radio show in the South. “I’m not a theologian; I don’t know where you draw the line. But listen, in 2011 I took a phone call from a guy named Harvey Updyke who is bragging about poisoning a tree. Alabama football was his religion. And he kind of went Crusades on us.”
That call, on Jan. 27, 2011, instantly became the most famous in sports-talk history, and Updyke the face of SEC football fanaticism.
An Alabama supporter from Dadeville, Alabama, angry in the wake of rival Auburn’s national championship victory over Oregon, Updyke called Finebaum’s program as “Al” and got into an argument with him. Updyke claimed Auburn fans celebrated the 1983 death of legendary Alabama coach Paul “Bear” Bryant the way they revel in all major victories — by toilet-papering the iconic oak trees at a campus gathering spot called Toomer’s Corner.
Finebaum told Updyke he was wrong, that no record of an Auburn celebration of Bryant’s death existed.
“He told me later, that’s when he snapped,” Finebaum said of Updyke. “He didn’t call in to admit anything.”
But Updyke revealed he had exacted revenge by poisoning those Auburn oak trees with a herbicide. He ended the call with a “Roll damn Tide,” and it was followed by calls from police, national news stories and a 76-day jail term for Updyke in 2013.
That saga, which includes the struggles to replace those Toomer’s Corner trees, is perhaps the ultimate example of a fan lacking perspective. But most of the stories of SEC football obsession are harmless, told with a smile or a chuckle, and they weave together to explain why SEC Saturdays are so special and seasons so successful.
“We have the greatest fans in college football in the SEC,” said former Alabama running back Derrick Henry, a rookie with the Tennessee Titans. “Especially Alabama. That’s all they have, Alabama football. That’s all they breathe, that’s all they live. Every day, every hour, every minute.”
NO DEGREE REQUIRED
At Vanderbilt, 57-yearold Smith has had football season tickets since he was a seventh-grader, making enough for his first purchase by buying sticks of gum for a nickel apiece and selling them at school for a dime. His passion only intensified from there, and he didn’t need to sit in a Vandy classroom to keep it.
“I’m a sidewalk fan,” he said. “I couldn’t go to Vanderbilt for five minutes, and I know it.”
Smith took the alias “Vandy Lance” in the 1980s, using it for his sports-talk radio proclamations. He’d show up for Vanderbilt tennis, soccer and baseball, and his relentless heckling of the opposing bench at basketball games earned media coverage.
No matter how badly the Commodores struggled on the football field, Smith was there. Screaming, win or lose. Louder when winning.
In 2005, when the Commodores ended a 22-game losing streak against UT, he was insufferable enough to invite a burning lawn. The fire got a bit too close to Smith’s house for his liking, but it was contained.
“That’s college football in the South,” Smith said. “If we had to give up Christmas or football … see you later, Santa.”
For Jerry and Nancy Fortner of Greenville, their 40 years of marriage have involved thousands of miles of travel to support the Vols. About 30 bowl games. And a lot of donations, too, though specifics are not available.
“I’m not going there,” said Jerry Fortner, owner of a warehouse and trucking company, who has had suites and club seats in Neyland Stadium and the same tailgating spot right next to it for about 30 years, with about 300 people showing up on a typical game day.
The pageantry hooked Fortner when he saw his first game at age 12. Like the field-sprinting Thornton, whose donations have resulted in the Thornton Athletics Student Life Center on campus, Fortner did not attend UT but came to love it because of the football experience.
“You know what the biggest SEC tradition is?” Fortner said. “It’s the fans and the camaraderie of the fans.”
Other leagues and regions have avid supporters, and Michael Redlick has seen Ohio State up close as an Ohio native. When he moved to Memphis in 2001 to work as director of corporate sponsorship with the Grizzlies, he saw something new.
Soon he was making pilgrimages to as many SEC stadiums as he could visit — LSU, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, UT, Arkansas.
“The pre-game, postgame activities by the fans?” Redlick said. “I had never seen anything like it in my life.”
THE WORD AND THE LAST WORDS
Rich Tiner uses football in his sermons at The Pointe Church in Mt. Juliet whenever the opportunity arises.
“It’s called knowing your audience,” Tiner said. “I know they’re watching. It’s a common reference point. And it’s safer than politics.”
And though there is inspiration to be found in the game, along with lessons of perseverance and belief, he also reminds the congregation that the Saturday stuff isn’t as important as the Sunday stuff.
“Most of us are more enthusiastic about our football than our faith, and that to me is troubling,” said Tiner, who also works as director of Belmont’s mass communication program and is the play-by-play announcer for Bruins women’s basketball.
At least many put it high on the list. Smith said Sunday church is always a part of his weekend, no matter where Vanderbilt is Saturday.
SEC football fans are devout, and they can test boundaries. Finebaum was surprised to discover, in the wake of the 2011 Updyke call, that many Alabama fans weren’t angry at all with the tree poisoning.
He was stunned a few weeks before that Updyke call, as he waited to give a eulogy at the funeral of his friend and devout Crimson Tide fan Bruce Graham in Birmingham.
Another friend later commended Finebaum for the long, dramatic pause before he spoke. But Finebaum was just registering what the eulogist before him had just revealed to the congregation — that Graham whispered “Go Ducks” to his sister just before he died.
That’s the Oregon Ducks, who were preparing to take on hated Auburn in the national championship game.
“‘Go Ducks’ was the very last thing the guy said in his life,” Finebaum said.