NCAA: A SEC-ular Holy War

At the school of the fourth-place team in the Pac-10 Conference, a half-filled stadium is not that bad. At the school of the champion of the Big 10 Conference, football had been an afterthought for a long time, and still plays second fiddle to basketball. At the school of the champion of the Big XII North Division, football hadn't existed for decades.

In the Southeastern Conference, the land of the Bible belt takes its label to heart when college football is the subject.

Torn down goal posts. Stomped hedges (could we say, "trampled vineyards where the grapes of wrath are stored?"). Stunning resurrections. Spirals into hell. Revolts of the people. Acts of messianic deliverance. Crimson Floods. Eager Volunteers. Age-old rivalries. Timeless bitterness. Packed worship houses.

Some of these elements apply only to this season, but others are constantly part of life in the Southern United States, where SEC football is the great secular religion--and quite appropriately, the stuff of mythic, epic, biblical proportions.

As the SEC season comes to a close with the crowning of the league champion on Saturday, the title game between Florida and Auburn offers a storyline and a backdrop that don't disappoint. Let's discover the Genesis of why this matchup is special.

In 1966, Florida coach Steve Spurrier, then the quarterback for the Gators, clinched the Heisman Trophy largely because of a game-winning 40-yard field goal he kicked against Auburn. The win put Spurrier within reach of his--and his school's--first ever SEC title. But Georgia--ironically Auburn's oldest rival--denied the Gators the title with a devastating 27-10 win.

More than a whole third of a century later, Spurrier and the Gators might as well be a team and a school that have not won an SEC title. The Florida program has not won a league crown since 1996, the last year in which Danny Wuerffel, Spurrier's Heisman successor at Florida, flicked his wrists and took his hits for the greater glory of the Gators. In the intervening years since then, the UF program has walked in the valley of the shadow of death, as upset losses in 1997, a missed field goal at Tennessee in 1998, and a clunker last December in Atlanta have all kept the Gators out of the winner's circle in the toughest conference in all of football (a conference with an eye-popping nine bowl-eligible teams).

Saturday, the team that stands in Spurrier's way of a return to SEC glory is the same team whose loss at the hands of Spurrier's right foot gave the well-known Gator his first taste, his initial imagination, of what winning the SEC was like, back in 1966. In the Georgia Dome against Auburn, Spurrier will want to restore what he built in the mid-1990s, and to fully taste the sweet nectar of an SEC title, first held out to him by the Tigers 34 years ago.

From an Auburn perspective, the larger-than-life nature of the redemption that potentially awaits on Saturday is no less dramatic. When the boys from the Alabama plains stepped onto the field in Gainesville on Oct. 14, they botched a fake punt on the first series of the game... and saw the contest end before the first half ended. A series of laser-quick strikes, almost all of them involving Florida freshmen Rex Grossman and Jabar Gaffney, gave the Gators a 35-7 halftime lead, the kind of lead built on the kind of performance that were all too common in the days when Wuerffel calmly flicked his wrist and commandeered a Gator juggernaut.

After Florida's thumping of Auburn nearly two months ago, Grossman quietly but matter-of-factly talked about how easy it was for him to pick apart the Auburn defense. Grossman wasn't talking trash, but now that the Tigers have earned a right to play the Gators again, the UF quarterback's comments have become bulletin board material circled in a red sea of ink, and a holy outcry of outrage and righteous indignation among Auburn players, coaches and fans.

With a jump-started defense and a full amount of momentum after wins over Georgia and Alabama (my eloquent and thoughtful e-sports colleague, Spencer Lee, documented scenes from the win over Georgia with his singularly distinguished and refreshing perspective), Auburn can claim to have righted its ship, and to be in position to write a very different narrative in this rematch of a regular season tilt.

A championship in the SEC is greater than a championship anywhere else. No title in no sport means more to a school or a community. Come Saturday, the ultimate Biblical conflict, the ultimate military battle, will be played out. Glory awaits... for only one.