How the SEC Became Goliath: The Making of College Football's Most Dominant Conference

Felt like I was there ! Wonderfully written with great examples of the SEC prowess and what it takes to compete.

With the evil Alabama playing again in the National Championship game on Monday night, this book review is timed well. I read it a while ago, and mostly forgot to review it. It was one of the nice non-fiction breaks in the year of reading theology. As a serious college football fan, this was an awesome book. It dealt with my favorite league, the mighty SEC. Of course my beloved Volunteers are struggling at this time, but the SEC is ruling the ranks. The book explains why this is happening, and even goes into some of the luck that has happened over this run of trophies. There are various factors that have contributed to the dominance of this league. One is the style of coaching of Nick Saban, he is willing to recruit a player, and put him on defense. Most of the best High School players are quarterbacks and running backs. This just makes sense, but these guys have been convinced that if they come to Bama and play cornerbacks, they will be drafted high. And this is the case. It is the willingness of the SEC to put the best guys on defense. Another aspect is the guys on the defensive line. This is where the SEC comes into play. You have fast and big men going after the quarterback. There is a chapter on Lame Kitten, which is great, and as a Vols fan, highly interesting. You see the luck that comes into play with the streak, as USC lost in the last game of the season and put Florida in. There is also the money game, the SEC championship game is well above the rest of the league championship games. Even look at the coaching hires this season, everyone is the minors to the SEC major leagues. For a College Football fan, this is a great book, and especially for the SEC fans. This is a great read.

The best two chapters within this book are the chapter on Nick Saban and the chapter on baseball's original dominance of the South. The chapter on Nick Saban goes into very good detail on how he learned his recruiting and talent evaluation process from his time in the NFL with Bill Belichick and the Cleveland Browns. The chapter on baseball in the South goes into very good detail on the migration of the black athlete away from baseball into football and how that positively impacted SEC teams on the gridiron.As for the rest of the book, it is a decent foray into the various underlying factors that have turned the Southeastern Conference into the juggernaut that it currently is. But as I read this book from beginning to end, I found myself saying that there must be more to this story. And that feeling is a result of the author, Mr. Glier, only skimming the surface of. Each chapter within this book presents high-level explanations for why but doesn't go into enough depth. As a college football fan and a fan of college football history, I was looking for a bit more from this book.

A reporter's thorough examination of how the SEC became the collegiate football powerhouse it currently is which has lead to 7 consecutive BCS championships. This is an unprecedented run and the book examines in detail the path that got them there from the importance of football to southern culture to the huge money to the hiring of Nick Saban by LSU in the late 1990's. If you are a college football fan this is a great read.

I liked this book. Being an SEC fan who attended Mississippi State made it seem like I was reading about people and places I knew. It got a bit dry at times but enjoyed it overall. Especially recommended for fans of the SEC football programs or critics interested in just how we do it here in the south!!!

This book has some interesting tidbits in it, but it's just too repetitive. Over and over it repeats, "The SEC wins because it prioritizes big and fast guys on the defensive line." After the 20th time reading that, I started skipping pages.

The author did his homework and tells alot, good and bad, about the SEC and how it became so dominant.It is a little slanted towards the SEC but he is from the South.His facts are hard to argue with and shows how great the conference has become.Roll Tide

As an avid SEC-watcher, I already was familiar with much of what the author discussed, but by the time I completed the book I felt I had a much deeper understanding of how and why the conference has attained its dominance. Very good breakdown of Saban/Alabama's system for producing juggernauts year after year but also looks at how the other champions in the conference's incredible run over the last few years have won.