All Our Teams- the Geography of SEC Fandom and Southern Identity
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University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Supervised Undergraduate Student Research Select or Award-Winning Individual Scholarship and Creative Work 2017 All Our Teams- The Geography of SEC Fandom and Southern Identity J. A. Cooper University of Tennessee, Knoxville Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_selectug Recommended Citation Cooper, J. A., "All Our Teams- The Geography of SEC Fandom and Southern Identity" (2017). Select or Award-Winning Individual Scholarship. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_selectug/9 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Supervised Undergraduate Student Research and Creative Work at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Select or Award-Winning Individual Scholarship by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Cooper 1 All Our Teams The Geography of SEC Fandom and Southern Identity J. A. Cooper Submitted to the Department of Geography of Emory & Henry College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the College Honors Diploma for the degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Geography. Faculty Advisor: Dr. Edward H. Davis _______________________ Outside Readers: Dr. Joseph H. Lane, Jr. _______________________ Dr. John T. Morgan _______________________ Defended: 18 April 2017 Cooper 2 Table of Contents Abstract: ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….3 Introduction: ………………………………………………………………………………………………………..4 Literature Review: …………………………………………………………………………………………………7 Data & Methods: ……..…………………………………………………………………….…………………….66 Delineating the Fan Region: ……………………………………………………….………………………118 Conclusion: ……………………………………………………………………………….….……………………138 Acknowledgements: …………………….…………………………………………….…….…………………141 Bibliography: ……………………………….…………………………………………………….………………143 Appendix: ……………………………….……..…………………………………………….……………………155 Cooper 3 Abstract Scholars have argued that the American South is one of the most distinct regions in the United States (Zelinsky 1980). Its inhabitants culturally identify with the geographic area and seek to express and retain that identity in many ways such as naming their businesses using the term “Southern” (Reed 1976), reading Southern Living (Lauder 2011), and eating collards (Davis and Morgan 2015). Geographers can map these cultural expressions and ones like them to better understand the spatial qualities of the South. One identifier of Southern culture is the intense and distinct fandom surrounding college football, specifically the variety played in the Southeastern Conference. Since the rise of Southern football to prominence in the Roaring 20s to the past decade that has seen eight SEC national championships, the South has taken a great interest in college football and has held autumn Saturdays when SEC football is played in high cultural esteem. SEC football can therefore be mapped to show the cores and peripheries of the conference’s geographical footprint in relation to the traditional cultural South. Spatial data from indicators of SEC fandom such as the 14 member institutions’ locations of ticket sales to games, donations made to the athletic departments, affiliate radio stations, internet searches, origin of athletes, and availability of vanity license plates are mapped here to approximate just where “SEC Country” is. Cooper 4 Introduction I was traveling from my home in Virginia one summer to conduct research for this project in Alabama and Mississippi. And, in the spirit of Chuck Kovacik and John Shelton Reed, I made it my mission to sample the local barbecue fare on my trip. Upon the recommendation of college football broadcaster Todd Blackledge, I stopped in Knoxville, TN at Dead End BBQ on the west end of town and ordered a pulled pork plate. It was a neat little joint, the type of local joint that has decorations all over the walls, good greasy food, and a friendly wait service. One particular decoration that caught my attention was the complete set of full-size helmets from each SEC team situated upon the bar’s awning. Apparently, I was not the only one to notice; a father of the family sitting at the table next to mine pointed up and told his family, “Look, they have football helmets of all our teams.” Within this one statement, this man had expressed not only his appreciation for the restaurant’s décor but also clues to his college football fandom, membership in imagined communities, and regional identity. The SEC, or the Southeastern Conference, is a grouping of fourteen institutions that compete against each other in a number of collegiate athletic competitions. The group was founded in 1932 and is characterized in modern times by the rabid fandom surrounding its football programs. The SEC is also integrally connected to the American South. Collegiate athletic conferences were founded as general reflections of the United States’ cultural regions, and the SEC represented the Deep South.1 Through the conference realignments of the 21st century, prominent NCAA athletic conferences have added and dropped teams with little regard for this traditional regional reflection except for the SEC; it still geographically reflects the South. This reflection is recognized by the 1 John F. Rooney & Richard Pillsbury, Atlas of American Sport (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co, 1992), 63. Cooper 5 fans of the SEC’s member institutions and helps to fuel and construct their sense of Southern identity. To someone living in the region, this connection between sport and identity is so obvious that it may be unconsciously recognized. When I was growing up in Alabama (described as “possibly the worst place on earth to acquire a healthy perspective on the importance of spectator sports”2), the phenomenon of SEC football surrounded me. I recognized it by teams’ logos on the walls and windows of my elementary school classrooms. I recognized it in the rush in my household to complete the Saturday chores in time for the 2:30 SEC game on television. And I recognized it by the grief my friends who were Auburn fans would give those who supported Alabama after the Tigers beat the Tide in the Iron Bowl not only on the Monday after but for the entirety of the next year. When I moved to Virginia, I perceived my new home as less Southern in part because of the diminished prevalence of Southeastern Conference football. The notion of Southern identity is a complex one that cannot be boiled down to just college football fandom. People express their regional identity in many ways: consuming media, cooking and eating foods, or naming businesses or streets with particular words.3 This holds true for the American South. However, a discussion of the “cultural geography of the South would be amiss without [including] football.”4 Since the 2 Warren St. John, Rammer Jammer Yellowhammer: A Journey into the Heart of Fan Mania (New York: Crown Publishers, 2004) 1. 3 Tracy Lauder, “Southern Identity in Southern Living Magazine,” Journal of Geography 111, no. 1 (2011). Edward H. Davis & John T. Morgan, Collards: A Southern Tradition from Seed to Table (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2015). John Shelton Reed, “The Heart of Dixie: An Essay in Folk Geography” Social Forces 54, no. 4 (Jun, 1976). Derek H. Alderman, “When Exotic Becomes Native: Taming, Naming, and Kudzu as Regional Symbolic Capital.” Southeastern Geographer 55, no. 1 (2015). 4 Larry Joe Morgan and Ted Klimasewski, “Pigskin Power Region: Dominance of Southern Collegiate Football,” Southeastern Geographer 55, no. 2 (Summer 2015): 215. Cooper 6 rise of Southern football to prominence in the Roaring 20s to the past decade that has seen considerable on-field success for the SEC, the South has taken a great interest in college football. Fans of the SEC use their fandom for their team and conference as an avenue for expressing their Southern pride and identity. This aspect of the Southern cultural mosaic can be examined geographically to gain insights into where SEC football is prevalent and subsequently impacts the lives of its fans. Therefore, this work seeks to explain the connection between SEC football fandom and Southern identity by utilizing cultural geographic and GIS methodologies to examine just where the fans of “all our teams” live. Cooper 7 Literature Review A fundamental feature of this work is its attempt to approximate a perceptual region based on the college football fanbase of the Southeastern Conference in relation to the cultural region of the South. The concept of regions is one that has been explored and has evolved in the discipline of geography for a long time. The authors of The Human Mosaic; Domosh, Neumann, Price, and Jordan-Bychkov; describe regions as a “geographical unit based on characteristics and functions of culture” and uphold regions as an important part of cultural and human geography.5 The study of regions at one time meant an in-depth description and analysis of a place; works by Odum and Vance that will be discussed later are examples of this early regionalism. Even then, geographers acknowledged regional study as a valuable tool for social research and understanding place.6 There existed an idea that the region existed as an entity “distinct from the whole;” that distinction necessitates the study of both the part and the whole to truly understand the part.7 The study of regions shifted towards a great effort to define formal and vernacular regions with defined