There are certainly some people who hate the South and therefore hate SEC football, as Evan argues. But more people hate SEC football for the same reason people hate the New York Yankees: Too much success.

The regional grievance isn’t the primary issue here. As Evan notes in the piece:

Every year, it seems, fans of the ACC, Pac-12, Big 12, and Big Ten suggest that the SEC is overrated. And every year, it seems, another national champion is crowned from the conference. Since 2006, when Tim Tebow led the Florida Gators to the title, a team from the SEC has won twelve of 16 national championships (75 percent). As of 2021, the conference had accrued more bowl wins (97) and appearances (152) than any other conference, posting a .638 winning percentage — the best of any conference in that time period. Surely that counts for something.

It does count for something (and don’t call me “Shirley”). The SEC is not overrated. Georgia is undefeated and is clearly the best team in college football this year, and they were clearly the best team in college football last year. They seem to have taken the mantle from Alabama as the perennial favorite to win the natty. Many of the best recruits want to play there.

Being consistently excellent will attract haters. The Yankees are a perfect example in baseball. Or the Patriots in the NFL. Or Duke in college basketball. Every college football fan in the Midwest outside of Ohio hates Ohio State, who won four Big 1o championship games in a row from 2017 to 2020. People hated USC when they had their dominant run with Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart earlier this century. It’s not about the region; it’s about the excellence.

People prefer to cheer for underdogs — unless you’re from the area represented by the favorite. Yankees fans are perfectly fine with the Yankees making the postseason nearly every year. New Englanders jumped for joy when the rest of the country groaned, “The Patriots again?” Place factors more in cheering for a team than in cheering against it.

Evan is even willing to suspend his dislike for Georgia, since he is an Auburn fan, to pull for the Bulldogs in the playoffs because he would rather a team from the SEC win than a team from a different conference. That’s the power of place and regionalism at work.

I do not join in SEC hatred, and I respect what programs in that conference have been able to achieve. But the flip side of SEC hatred is SEC supremacism, and that took a beating yesterday.

There was considerable debate about whether two-loss Alabama of the SEC should have made the four-team playoff over one-loss TCU or one-loss Ohio State, on account of the fact that the SEC is a stronger conference than either the Big 12 or Big Ten. But both Ohio State and TCU showed they belonged. Ohio State nearly beat Georgia, and TCU beat the formerly undefeated Big Ten champion Michigan. Based on yesterday’s games, it’s hard to second-guess the selection committee’s choices, and it seems that it did in fact choose the four best teams in the country this year, without including Alabama.

If Alabama wanted to make the playoff, it shouldn’t have lost two regular-season games, failing to make the SEC championship game. TCU was undefeated during the regular season, and Ohio State’s only loss was to Michigan in their annual rivalry game. And Georgia’s barely squeaking by Ohio State, after trailing for most of the game, is hardly a vindication of the SEC’s supposed overwhelming dominance. If anything, it shows there are chinks in the SEC’s armor.

SEC haters are wrong, but we don’t need to resort to mysticism or regional biases to understand why they hate. When the SEC’s dominance wanes, as it eventually will, and some other conference puts together a string of national championships, people will hate that conference instead. It’s not personal; it’s sports.

Correction: A previous version of this post said Ohio State lost the Big 10 championship game. They lost to Michigan in the final game of the regular season.