SEC Fan Base Power Rankings

While doing nothing, I decided to start an internet fight... with everyone.

Here's the deal: I've spent a fair amount of time observing SEC sports. Certainly, many of you have paid greater attention for longer, but I imagine that I have gathered enough information as to who I like and don't like and that is especially true with concerns to the fan bases of each respective conference member. Therefore, in my continuous boredom, I have put together a power ranking of the SEC fan bases. I'm obviously biased towards Ole Miss (and, as you'll see, against some others) so I will rank the 11 other conference members with 11 being the most enjoyable fans and 1 being the least enjoyable fans. Enjoy.

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-These first two fan bases and I have shared fairly extensive interaction, almost all of which has been fun, cordial, or both.

11. Georgia
First up are the Georgia Bulldogs. From all that I have gathered, Georgia fans are a class act. My first experience with the original Bulldogs came two years ago in the Grove. From the time we set up our tents to the time we passed out on Saturday night, the Bulldog faithful were out in full force. We suffered a surprisingly close loss that evening (remember the phantom holding penalties?) in front of a national audience yet, despite having been defeated, the Georgia fans on hand weren't ones for shit talkin' and drunken hooliganism. Y'see, Georgia is better than you, and they know it. After a gridiron victory they don't have some sort of inferiority complex kicking in and bringing them to taunt the children of the opposing fans. For example, after last year's Sugar Bowl I met dozens of Bulldogs on Bourbon Street. Whenever a defeated horde of Hawai'i fans were in the vicinity the aforementioned Georgians didn't resort to asinine taunts or jeers. Instead, they gave their recent opponents the "I just fucked your girlfriend" look and moved on. In addition, these UGA fans had nothing but respect for me and my friends for being fellow SEC fans. They love their school, they love their team, and they love the SEC in general. It should be noted that the only Georgia fan I've ever not liked was this harlot I met recently in Montgomery, AL. She had a whiny attitude and a snotty demeanor more appropriate to a denizen of Starkville than that of, well, anywhere outside of Starkville.

10. Vanderbilt
Here's an anecdote: At last year's Vandy game I witnessed one of the most embarrassing defeats of my life. As I was hanging my head in shame (literally), an older gentleman wearing a gold and black polo patted me on the back and said, "It's just a game kid." While a bit of a "pop warner" response, I feel it clearly illustrates my point: Vanderbilt has not been consistently good at anything in decades and their fan base reflects that. They're quiet and do a fairly good job of minding their own business. Their school has an academic reputation to maintain and they will oftentimes place that before athletics. At the aforementioned game, a grizzled man in his early 40's wearing black gym shorts, a Vandy jersey, and black Reeboks drunkenly waved a homemade Commodores flag while taunting my friends and me to our faces. To boot, the man couldn't afford a $30 pair of AM/FM headphones and was literally holding a small radio up to his head to tune in on all the action (I wish I had taken a picture). Another, wealthier Vanderbilt fan, seeing this, quickly came over and assured us that this man most likely never attended Vanderbilt. We were losing the game, yet this man was focused way more on the integrity of his degree than that of his football team. I will say this though: their fans are terrible hecklers. A few Commodore students were sitting in front of us during the Vandy/LSU game in Hoover this past year and the best insult they could collectively muster was "hey, ummm, LSU guys, umm you're gonna LOSE!" Apparently, "clever" isn't something the college admissions boards look for.

-My experiences with the next two fan bases are much more limited. They're not "nonexistent," but they're not as strong as the fan bases on the top or bottom of these rankings.

9. South Carolina
Realistically speaking, my experience here is too limited for me to appropriately opine on the matter. I think the whole "cockaboose" thing is pretty cool and I really enjoy the Garnet and Black Attack so, huzzah, South Carolina! Furthermore, the fact that your these fans fill their 80,000+ capacity stadium even when they're the bottom of the SEC is incredibly admirable.

8. Kentucky
I have never been in an environment with Kentucky fans in which they gave a shit, meaning that I've never attended a Kentucky basketball game. During the one Kentucky football game I attended I was able to witness one of Coach O's rare SEC victories. I was also able to interact with several of them at Hoover. Most of the fans at the SEC Baseball tournament were the typically quiet friends and family of the players however, sitting in front of us during the Kentucky/Ole Miss game were what looked like crosses between Jared Lorenzen and Kevin Federline: snotty, fat, goatee-having, baggy-shirt wearing Kentuckians. They directed their heckles and taunts at the families of the diamond Rebs, specifically the younger sisters of Cody Overbeck and Brett Basham. Shortly later, their fat asses were escorted from Hoover Metropolitan with Stewie Griffin's sousaphone blaring at their backsides.

-Number 7 isn't so much a rant against the fans as people, but rather it's a rant involving my disgust with a certain behavior of theirs.

7. Auburn
I hate the War Eagle chant. To be fair, it's not necessarily the chant itself (the words, the rhythm, etc) that I detest, but rather the terribly bizarre situations in which you'll hear Auburn fans shout it out. A friend of mine had always made fun of War Eagle saying "they'd likely scream it at funerals," but I never believed it to be that sincere until I attended a wedding between an Ole Miss girl and an Auburn guy once in Montgomery, AL. At the rehearsal dinner, an old guy pulled out an "are you ready" during a toast he was giving. I, along with the other Rebels in attendance, casually rolled my eyes and thought the whole thing was silly. He didn't get his much desired "Hotty Toddy." Yet, a minute later, the same man blurted out a War Eagle to which a few dozen folks, young and old, replied loudly in kind. I was stunned. "They'll literally say War Eagle when and wherever provoked," I thought to myself. It's a like this Scrubs clip. Press play, enjoy the clip, and substitute the word "pickles" with "War Eagle." You'll swear you're on the plains of Alabama.


-These next four schools have the worst affliction of sidewalk fans in the conference. They are able to fill their megastadiums not only with students and alumni, but any asshole who can afford a ticket and an appropriately colored hat.

6. Florida
As has been said, Florida fans wear jorts. There is photographic evidence of this all over the internet so we would be remiss to incessantly harp on this point. While Florida most certainly fits in the category of a team with a large "sidewalk" fan base, their in state rivals of Florida St. and Miami are even guiltier of said offense. This is troublesome because the increasing encroachment of the Northeast (New Yorkers relocating to die retire) on Florida's once Southern soil has brought techno music, hair gel, and protein powders into the mainstream among Gators fans. While not particularly mean-spirited, the Florida fan base is quite a nuisance. I guess that's why a touch of Schadenfreude wells up in your gut when you see things like Auburn's kicker mocking the "Gator Chomp." It's sort of like the rest of us saying "dammit Florida, you're so fucking weird."

5. Tennessee
Orange, orange, orange. You see it everywhere, coating everything. "And it's not like that orange you can stand...it's that 'throw-up' orange. It's not that orange that you can sit with, (it's) that puke, inside of a pumpkin orange." Tennessee fans are everywhere and there's seemingly no end to them in sight when you're trekking through the Volunteer state. They've ruined Rocky Top (yeah, it's a real song) for everyone and, for that, I cannot forgive them. In addition, a lot of their sidewalk fans are a part of the "kooky hill folk" strain of meth users people and are generally quite insufferable.

I will say this though: they're not nearly as hostile or willing to publicly start an argument as our SEC Western division foes. I visit Tennessee often and whether it be the Smokies, Nashville, or Memphis, I'm likely to encounter anywhere between a dozen and a billion Volunteer fans. Yet, I haven't experienced any real hostility to date.

4. LSU
LSU is 4th on this list? How the fuck did that happen? Good God, how things have changed. I have several friends who attend or attended LSU and many of them are well versed people who always serve as good company. Unfortunately, cajuns breed at a rate most rodents would find shocking and neglect to send their offspring to institutions of higher learning (I mean, somebody's gotta man the trawlin' nets). This leads to an LSU following which is comprised primarily of incomprehensible assholes. At last year's Mardi Gras, a coverboy for Guido Douche Elite Magazine found out I was of the Ole Miss persuasion. After receiving hell for a minute or two I naturally assumed him to be an LSU tiger. Nope, not at all. Turns out the guy "went to" a community college. Note, I didn't say "graduate from." I turned to the guy, smugly swigged my beer, and calmly said "community college, huh? I'm a graduate of a four year university." I could see his blood boiling even under his self-applied tanner. Also, those asses who walk around dressed as pimps should be thrown alive onto a flaming pyre.

3. Alabama
The Bear is fucking dead. He died over two damned decades ago. Live in the present for once. Honestly, if you weren't so insane I would really enjoy Alabama fans. Most of the students and alumni of Alabama that I have met were fairly intelligent and rather classy individuals. It's the crimson clad slackjaws coming down from Sand Mountain every weekend that are the problem. I'd swear, some of these folks act as if they have aims of reuniting the ethereal spirit of the "Bahr" with the corporeal body of "Saint Nick" via voodoo charming/ouiji. It's tragic really. Alabama is a good school with a storied football program; yet it is completely ruined by the crazies.

-Nazi Germany didn't hate Gypsies as much as I hate these next two sets of jackasses. They're ignorant, backwards, and illogical; the whole lot of em. Alright, maybe not the "whole" lot, but more of them are bonkers than what would normally be proportionally healthy. Furthermore, their staggeringly high inferiority complexes cause them to annoy us at no end.

2. Mississippi St.
What a nuisance these guys are. I don't think there is another group of football fans outside of College Station, TX who put more emphasis on beating their instate rival than the Mississippi State band of Maroons. If they have a 1-11 season coincide with an 11-1 Ole MIss Rebel season (a fantasy, I know), with their win/our loss involving the exchange of a Golden Egg trophy they would be more than ecstatic. Take, for example, last year's Battle for the Golden Egg. An Ole Miss team which was winless against all SEC foes was defeated by an unlikely fourth quarter comeback. The cowbells clanged, the maroon flags waved, the Walrus' tears flowed, and the owners of YouTube had to slang rock on the side just to cover the new bandwidth costs. I swear, you'd assume these poor bastards had beaten USC in the Coliseum or won an SEC title but, no, that didn't happen. They squeaked by a shitty Ole Miss team. Way to go.

1. Arkansas
Up until a few weeks ago, Arkansas would have been 6th or 7th on this list, maybe. I had little experience with them and it wasn't horrible (or particularly pleasant) at that. I was rather indifferent towards the Razorbacks, just as most of us Rebels were. I found a few of them to be reasonable folk and made sure to mentally segregate them from the ozark-grown corn liquor sector of the fan base. Now, with the circumstances surrounding the dismissal and hiring of Houston Nutt, those lines have blurred. They're all off the reservation, and that's not just us saying this. Literally, everyone on the outside looking in sees just how nuckin-futs these oinkers have become. No wonder Houston Nutt seems to be in dire need of intravenous Xanax supplements. I link all of this Arkansas insanity to an incredibly strong inferiority complex that sees its roots way back when in the old Southwest Conference days. Then, Arkansas' biggest rival was Texas. To Texas, however, they were an afterthought behind Oklahoma and Texas A&M. Once they merged into the SEC, a fake "golden boot" rivalry was formed between the Hogs and LSU. LSU, though, would be quicker to call us Rebels, the Florida Gators, the Alabama Crimson Tide, or the Auburn Tigers rivals than they would the Arkansas Razorbacks. With the Las Cronicas de Boss Hawg unfolding and eventually winding down in Oxford, MS, the Hawgs finally have that rival they've been so anxiously waiting for. Or so they thought. Yes, even to us Ole Miss Rebels the Arkansas Razorbacks will likely forever be a 3rd tier rival. Certainly this season will see an unusual amount of weight placed on the annual SEC West meeting but the tensions will subside sooner rather than later, on our end at least. This may sound silly to some of you, but I've seen sentiments to this effect expressed by Arkansas fans.

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So, where do you think we fit into this? I, of course, am directing this at any and all SEC fans outside of the Ole Miss family. Throw some sweeping generalizations our way and let us know how horrible we are to you with respect to other SEC foes. We'd love to hear it.