SEC Football Fans Crossing Into Lunacy Over Postponed LSU-Florida Game

SEC football fans are among the most vocal, passionate and loyal in the country. They also have a tendency to be the most loony.

When it comes to college football, fans of SEC teams are always heard from, and usually quite bluntly. They’ll be the first to tell you who the best conference – and team in that conference – is at the drop of a chicken wing.

Living in SEC country and having attended an SEC school, I’ve always been able to take the eccentricities of fans around the conference with a grain of salt…usually a full shaker full of it. But in the wake of Hurricane Matthew, many of these fans leapt from eccentric to downright lunatics.

Due to the temporary (and it is temporary) cancellation of the LSU Tigers – Florida Gators game in Gainesville, fans all over the conference have turned into a cackling group of Rodney Ruxins, hollering collusion and cowardice at every turn.

This ain’t the best look for you folks, SEC fans. Not even a little.

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The most absurd accusation which seems to be flying around is that Florida was just plain scared of LSU and didn’t want to play the game, seeing the unplanned fury of nature as a way out of facing the fearsome Tigers.

The 3-2 Tigers who fired one of the winningest coaches in SEC history last month.

The Tigers with an interim head coach who has a history of losing in the SEC.

The Tigers with a conundrum at quarterback that only pales by comparison to the Cleveland Browns.

Yeah…the Gators are a’skeered of those Tigers.

Even nearly a week after the fact, SEC fans are still posting unreasonable and (to be honest) idiotic comments on social media, like a fan in Baton Rouge who commented on a Facebook post:

“I’ll answer that with the 100% truth. They knew they were gonna get their asses BEAT, so they chickened out like a 5th grader at a school fight.”

Even the media wanted to hop on board the blame train.

Get a grip, delusional SEC-folk. There is no conniving, no collusion, no power-play by exiting Florida AD Jeremy Foley as the last middle finger to his rivals. There is no fear in the eyes of the Gators, and there is no grand plan to keep Tennessee, LSU or anyone else from going to Atlanta in December.

Take a cue from Disney you guys…let it go.

Plain and simple, this was an act of God…a potential natural disaster that was bearing down on Gainesville, Florida with titan-like fury. The powers at the University of Florida and in the SEC offices waited as long as they could to make the call, and given the information they had at the time, they made the right call.

Cancel the game, for now.

Hurricanes are unpredictable, as was seen by Matthew. What looked to be a sure direct hit to middle Florida turned out to be a sweeping blow all the way up the eastern seaboard, and the good people of Gainesville are more than happy to have been spared.

For those fans screaming that SEC commissioner Greg Sankey “caved” and that his office should have had a contingency plan – you should go visit the coasts of Georgia and the Carolinas right now, and ask them how their contingency plans worked out.

Or ask Notre Dame and North Carolina State and their fans how reasonable it was to play the game even in the aftermath of the hurricane’s outer bands.

The plan is that you work to play the game as scheduled if possible, and when that no longer becomes a possibility, you explore the options. You don’t endanger fans, emergency crews, public servants, media, network employees and school personnel over a football game.

Yes, it was quite the magnanimous gesture for LSU athletic director Joe Alleva to offer his home stadium during the desperate hours, but that wasn’t a reasonable solution. Had the hurricane hit as was thought, there would be no getting to roads or on flights in and out of anywhere.

This was Mother Nature exhibiting her utmost control over things, and not even the mighty SEC was going to overcome her.

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So put away your secret decoder rings, SEC fans. There’s no mystery to solve and nothing suspect about the way things happened. The game will be played, and someone will probably be inconvenienced by the make-up date. That’s the way things roll. But human lives and safety are far more important than a football game.

Yes, even an SEC football game.