It Just Means More: SEC Football in Country Music

Abstract: Football and Southeastern Conference football team affiliation have both shaped and become an integral part of identity in the American South. The victories of southern football teams in the early twentieth century helped level the social and economic playing fields in the South by demonstrating that the region was not simply home to defeated secessionists. This essay traces ways that high-earning early investors in southern football identity, like the SEC, and other cultural factors, show up in present-day popular culture like country music, and how both the SEC and country music business and artists might benefit from the connection.