I’ve lived in Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Missouri and Alabama. I feel curiously situated to answer your initial question. After much deliberation, I’ll add this. The most die-hard fan of the Tide (or Vols…or Gators) loves his team no more or less than the most die-hard fan of the Buckeyes (or Badgers…or Hawkeyes).

From my observations, however, there are three ways in which you can state that the SEC fans love college football more: 1) the sheer number of the die-hard fans in the South dwarfs the number in the Midwest; 2) the level of unabashed hatred for rival schools is unlike anything (and I mean ANYTHING) that exists in the Big Ten; and 3) there is a focus on college football that is not distracted by trivial things (like MLB, NFL, NHL, and NBA).

That third point is both cause and effect in some ways.

Texas got pro football in 1961. The Falcons and Saints didn’t exist until the end of the decade. For the forty plus years that Penn State, Michigan, and Illinois had to compete with the Eagles, Lions and Bears, the South only had Saturday football. Baseball didn’t even come to the region until 1966 when the Braves moved from Milwaukee.

This meant fewer sports to talk about, but more importantly, fewer sports to be reared on. I think of it this way: I learned to love sports watching it with my Dad. He grew up a Bears fan, a Cubs fan, a DePaul fan (his alma mater) and a Blackhawks fan. Now I root for the White Sox over the Cubs (like my mother) but otherwise, I still root for the same teams as my father. If he was born in Atlanta, Birmingham, Baton Rouge, or Nashville, my father would have had no local pro teams to grow up with and only had his alma mater. As a result, what teams do you think he would have passed on to me? His college team of choice. We’ve finally reached second-generation Atlanta Braves fans. It will be a long time before there are second generation Nashville Predator fans. Much like we’re into the fifth generation of Packers fans, we’re into the fifth generation of Georgia fans.

As an Illinois alum, I believe that I love the Illini as much as any SEC fan loves his or her team. However, as a lifelong Chicagoan, I’m also a diehard Bears, Bulls, and White Sox fan (with heightened interest in the Blackhawks). Therefore, I don’t have a 365-days-per-year focus on all things Illini. All of the other Big Ten schools (except for Iowa) are also strongly tied to major markets with multiple pro teams, so while the passion of our fans would match the intensity of the SEC on a football Saturday, we have other teams to watch the other 6 days of the week. In contrast, I could see how living in Alabama would translate into a complete focus on the Crimson Tide or Auburn even if it’s in the middle of June.

I would say this about the Big Ten, though – compared to other conferences that have schools with fan bases in strong pro team markets (i.e. New York, Boston, etc.), we compared extremely favorably. The fact that we are able to amass such large fan bases even though we AREN’T the only teams in our respective towns is a testament to our passion.

Every day of my professional life, I look out my office window at a railroad track that had to be rebuilt after the Battle of Jonesboro marked the end of William T. Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign. My home town was burned to the ground as a result of that military defeat. My great-great-grandfather was imprisoned in a POW camp in Point Lookout, Maryland, as a result of his decision to defend his homeland from an invading army. If I said I didn’t get a visceral sense of payback whenever I see a Big Ten team lose to an SEC team, I’d be lying.

Sniffle. It’s a damn injustice that the Union Army decided to finish a war that the South started. A war fought in support of the most vile tradition this country has ever known. General Grant said it best in his 1885 autobiography:

For the present, and so long as there are living witnesses of the great war of sections, there will be people who will not be consoled for the loss of a cause which they believed to be holy. As time passes, people, even of the South, will begin to wonder how it was possible that their ancestors ever fought for or justified institutions which acknowledged the right of property in man.

If Grant had foreseen the Confederacy nostalgia industry, he probably would have strung up Robert E. Lee himself. If the Germans and Japanese are still upset that they lost WWII, at least they have the good sense to shut up about it. And some now-living Germans and Japanese actually lived through it, unlike the Dixie-holics who are internalizing the indignities suffered by their great-great-great-granddaddies.

I’m not much a “conference pride” guy, but if SEC fans really view each win over the Big Ten as revenge for a war than their ancestors richly deserved to lose, then I think I will take a little pleasure each time a damn Yankee team gets the better of a team from the SEC.