SEC Tent Revival
Believers in the religion of the SEC reaffirm their faith beginning on Monday with the annual return of SEC Media Days at The Wynfrey Hotel. It's a summer tent revival for football fans.
If the Southeastern Conference were an actual religion, the SEC Media Days would be its annual tent revival.
Consider it the yearly call to worship for a sport a few people in the South might take a little too seriously. This time around, SEC Media Days begins on Monday and runs through Thursday at The Wynfrey Hotel in Hoover, Ala. How would someone describe it in one sentence? Shakespeare said it best, of course. The coach "struts and frets" on the dais for about an hour, and then is "heard no more."
If college football had a come to Jesus meeting, SEC Media Days would be the opposite of that. It's not important, but it's all important. Sound and fury, and all that jazz.
Scholars and philosophers have long since written about the unhealthy parallels between sports worship and actual worship, and this column is a tongue-in-cheek extension of that tradition. While researching the subject, I contacted Samford University's divinity school for some guidance. The Beeson Divinity School employes a bunch of smart people, and is a shining gem in suburban Birmingham.
Rightly, they didn't want anything to do with this. They knew before I did, this one is a tale told by an idiot.
In their grace, Beeson's staff did, however, send me a link to a paper written by one of their professors on football and religion. I understood very little of it, but there was one part that registered in my very dense brain. "Nietzsche followed-up his famous 'God is dead' declaration with a question, 'How shall we comfort ourselves....What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent?'"
I ask you this, Nietzsche: How can God be dead if Nick Saban still walks the sidelines at Bryant-Denny? Saban isn't God, but in the SEC he is proof that one exists.
TRUE RELIGION
"Nelson Mandela once said, and I quote, sport has the power to change the world, it has the power to inspire, it has the power to unite people in a way that little else does." -Former SEC Commissioner Mike Slive, 2014 SEC Media Days
Preach on, Brother Slive, you great prophet of SECology. Sports, man. Dudes like it a lot. And, yes, there is something brazenly ridiculous about a writer misconstruing the words of a person who once took the words of another person out of context.
But that's the stuff of true religion, y'all.
In other words, welcome to SEC Media Days 2016. Hashtag #SECMD16.
Fans love it. Sportswriters attend it. Fans masquerading as sportswriters crash it. It'll be just like last year, only this time all of your dreams will come true. About 1,500 "media members" attend the event. Sports Illustrated will be there, but might not ask a single question. Touchdown Alabama will also be there, and might ask all of them.
There are about 69.5 million Catholics in the United States. There are over 70 million subscribers to the SEC Network. So, it's kind of a big deal.
Folks in the Bible Belt like to call football a religion, but if the SEC were an actual form of theology, it's size would rival the country's largest denomination of Christianity. On Monday, all 14 sects of SECology come together at The Wynfrey for the religion's annual pilgrimage.
There is even an unlimited supply of Dr. Pepper in honor of Forrest Gump.
What's the origin story of SEC Media Days? Well, before there was televangelism, there were tent revivals in the sweltering heat of Southern summers. The SEC Media Days are somehow both at the same time, and it's a glorious spectacle to behold. For four straight days, coaches will stand around and talk a lot while trying to say nothing at all.
Rhetorically speaking, there is nothing quite like it in the history of the spoken universe. Naturally, the SEC Network will broadcast every second of the coach-speaking crusaders. The beat writers will spread the gospel. The frat-bro websites will tweet about it with ironic, irreverent fervor.
FAITH HEALERS
Like any good tent revival, there will be peddlers of hope, and sellers of salvation, and baptisms of fire and brimstone. There will be revivalists, and resurrectionists and charlatans, too.
Arkansas coach Bret Bielema has a reputation for being that fancy dressing preacher man with all the right words. He speaks on Wednesday. Last year, he said "borderline erotic" in response to a question, and that was determined to be the best thing that happened in four days.
After going 6-1 in his final seven games last season, there is no telling what Bielema will wear to Hoover this year.
LSU coach Les Miles will evangelize the doubters on Thursday with a story about how he cheated death over the offseason.
Whoever is currently coaching Vanderbilt will try to once again bring that team back from the dead.
The clean and holy coaches of Tennessee and Ole Miss will pray for everyone's absolution. The new coaches at South Carolina, Missouri and Georgia will be cleansed by the baptismal waters of hope.
Nick Saban will talk about the end of days.
Auburn coach Gus Malzahn will speak in tongues.
The SEC is full of faith healers, and this time of year everyone thinks their team can be saved.
Yes, even Kentucky and Mississippi State.
SELF-RIGHTEOUS MEDIA
As for the media, it's always a mixed bag of self-righteous sinners.
There are heretics, like me, who think the SEC is too big and too monetized. There are fundamentalists, like Clay Travis, who swear by the SEC's golden rule: If you ain't cheat'n, you ain't try'n. There are demigods, like Tim Tebow, who grace us with his presence. There are creationists, like Paul Finebaum, who plugged his microphone into the trailer park long before reality TV.
But, seriously, what's stopping the SEC from being considered an actual religion? There are believers right now willing to die for Saban, and, more importantly, all the member churches make obscene amounts of money and don't pay taxes on it. The SEC is a $5 billion enterprise, and that doesn't even account for stuff like economic impact and bowl games and frat parties.
In 2014, Southern Baptists donated $11 billion to their churches. That's a drop in the bucket for the SEC. The business of hope is always booming, y'all. Can a brother get an amen?
Look at this way. Every religion in the world is essentially the same, and SECism is no different.
First, there must be a collective mystical glue, or some Pentecostal power that unites everyone. For SECists, that spirit is a unique kind of fandom borne from elitism, isolationism and Bourbon.
Next, for something truly to be considered a religion, the collective spirit of the faith must be experienced outside of ourselves (like at a tailgate), but also felt inside of ourselves (like after a tailgate).
Like every proper religion, most SEC fans need to feel really guilty and pathetic about themselves most of the time to fully appreciate the power of belief. So, Alabama fans are pretty much damned for eternity. Tennessee fans, however; those humbled masses get to stroll right through the gates of evermore.
And that brings us to the point of it all. The most universal thing about religion, of course, is the path to liberation. In the SEC, this means winning by all means necessary. Then, only through victory can enlightenment be achieved.
A national championship marks the end of suffering...unless, of course, Lane Kiffin is on the staff.
This will be the first SEC Media Days without Steve Spurrier in quite a while, and that's a shame. In honor of the Ol' Ball Coach, here's a quote from Spurdog last year summarizing everything ever said at SEC Media Days:
"We're hoping to return to where we were the prior three years, a top ten team. We believe we have a fighting chance to do that. I know the critics are out there, and that's why they're called critics. They criticize every chance they get, and we gave them some chances to criticize us last year, which is OK. That's part of our sport. But we're really looking forward to this year. We're sort of anxious and eager to see what we can do."
Such a boring quote, right? But here's how the magic happens. Here's how words become scripture and scripture becomes religion. The great prophets of the SEC -- the sportswriter hacks -- will spin that quote, and gin it up, and sprinkle on some fairy dust, and package it 20,000 different ways, and when it's all over everyone will think their team can get to at least seven wins.
Or, you're fired -- sacrificed to the beasts of the Southern wild like sinners in the hands of an angry God.
Defeat, that's the devil talking, and it's always trying to find a way inside the tent at SEC Media Days. The seeds of a coach's demise are sown this week. Gus Malzahn, you're on notice. For there is only one true God in the SEC, and her name is Victory.