SEC needs lesson in geography

When it comes to college football, some people need a geography lesson. Those kids on the show “Are you Smarter than a Fifth Grader?” would put some of them to shame.
In college sports, SEC stands for the Southeastern Conference, not the Securities and Exchange Commission (although an antitrust investigation might be nice). The sports SEC released its schedule last week for this year’s football season.
There are two new SEC members, and the University of Florida plays them both, traveling to Texas A&M and hosting Missouri.
Missouri and Texas in the Southeast? Quick, grab a map and see what happened.
The expansion is part of the recent expansion of major college conferences in a power grab by those leagues, much to the dismay of the smaller leagues, and leading to an even bigger mess in the Bowl Championship Series (the hated BCS).
The SEC is not alone in the geography problem. The ACC, which stands for Atlantic Coast Conference, recently added Syracuse and Pittsburgh. To my knowledge, neither of those fine communities has a beach on the Atlantic.
The Pac-12 (Pac standing for Pacific) added Utah and Colorado, and for a while considered Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. I didn’t know those six schools were on the Pacific Ocean.
Then there’s the Big 10, which doesn’t have a geographic name, but has had 11 teams for years. Recently it added a 12th team, Nebraska, but it can’t call itself the Big 12 … there’s already a conference with that name, although the Big 12 is down a couple of teams after some split for other conferences.
All this math is making me dizzy.
We won’t even get into the Big East, which in basketball includes Notre Dame from Indiana.
Anyhow, back to the Southeast. I personally don’t consider anyplace where it snows regularly as part of the South. Tennessee is borderline, but Kentucky, regardless of its SEC ties, to me is “up North.” As for Missouri, I went there twice in the winter, and it was brutally cold. That’s not my idea of an SEC area.
For those who care, here’s Florida’s 2012 schedule: Sept. 1, Bowling Green; Sept. 8, at Texas A&M; Sept. 15, at Tennessee; Sept. 22, Kentucky; Sept. 29, open; Oct. 6, LSU; Oct. 13, at Vanderbilt; Oct. 20, South Carolina; Oct. 27, vs. Georgia in Jacksonville; Nov. 3, Missouri; Nov. 10, Louisiana-Lafayette; Nov. 17, Jacksonville State; Nov. 24, at Florida State.
Bowling Green, Louisiana-Lafayette and Jacksonville State? Wow! I could really go off my diet just thinking about those three cupcakes.
Jim Clark is the editor of the South Marion Citizen. He can be reached at 352-854-3986 or at editor@smcitizen.com.