How the SEC Became Goliath. Ray Glier.

How the SEC Became Goliath.     Ray Glier.

The Making of College Football’s Most Dominant Conference. 

Ray Glier’s fascinating book, The Making of College Football’s Most Dominant Conference, treats readers to a delicious tale of intriguing college football in the south.   More specifically, this book is all about how the game is played in the southeastern football conference and its manifestation into the most powerful conference in America.   As Glier argues extensively, a Goliath of sorts.

Full disclosure, this book was published in 2013.    I finished reading it about ten years after publication.   Some parts of the book by now are decidedly outdated.   That is not the fault of the author for our review purposes.     However, much of the insight and opinion of Glier is fascinating and still relevant in college football today, and to ardent readers of the sport, especially the rabid fans of southern college football.

Glier covers topic ranging from the history of the conference all the way through its emergence in the first decade of the 21^st century as the most powerful conference in NCAA football.    He interviews many coaches, players and contributors in between to cover all of the bases.    The reader will get insight from some of the most renown 21^st century coaches to walk the sidelines in this conference including Nick Saban, Urban Myer, Les Miles and Steve Spurrier.

The history lesson informs the readers of how the southeastern conference came about in the early 1930’s.   His research revealed as many scandals in the early 20^th century as is reported today…not just with the southern schools, though.    Paying players has always been an issue concerning amateur sports.   This was no different in the early days of collegiate football.    Shortly after forming, the SEC decided to issue scholarships to players as an enticement to attract better players into their league.   This was met with much disdain and contempt from schools in the north and west, prompting Glier to refer to them as hypocrites.   Nevertheless, all other schools eventually followed suite and did the same.   The point being was the newly born SEC became trend setters nearly a century ago and continue operating on the cutting edge today.      

The fan will get a lesson in how to build the perfect player in the SEC.   Glier talks to noted strength coaches Tommy Moffitt and Mickey Mariotti who both have been success’ in the SEC conference.    A chapter is devoted to just how important the strength coach and staff is to the head coach, team and program.  Moffitt, who was the LSU strength coach at the time the book was published, was all about building bigger, stronger players across the board.  He is known for developing “force producing machines”.    Marotti, who helped train the Florida Gators to National championships in 2006 and 2008, maintained a philosophy of toughness.    One of the sayings in Gainesville was “the tougher you are, the tougher you get.”

Possibly the best chapter in the book revolves around the philosophy of how Alabama goes about recruiting their players.     Glier introduces the reader to legendary coach Nick Saban’s philosophy of how to recruit the “right” players for each position in the game.     Of course, we have to go back earlier in the coach’s career to see where this school of thought originates.    Perhaps not that surprisingly it was developed at an even higher level of football, although not by much, in the NFL.    Saban and company used a system that considered the players size for the position they were being recruited to play.   If prospective recruits did not measure up to the standards, they were marked down in their priority list.  What resulted for Alabama, and other elite programs now, is mostly bigger, faster, more athletic players on the perimeter and in the trenches, too.    

The last chapter, while interesting, was written as if the author were just whisking off opinions and editorializing his thoughts of how he sees the game and where it could or should be headed.    This was a bit of an unexpected break from the rest of the chapters and could be perceived as a bit of a drawback in this otherwise solid opus.  

Glier, the author of 4^th and Goal Every Day and publisher of geezerjocknews.com, makes his point very clear in how the SEC became the “Goliath” of college football.   The dynasty of college football national championships strongly supports this notion.   A member of the SEC conference laid claim to a national championship every year from 2006 through 2012 despite playing the toughest conference schedules on average in each of those seasons.    In addition, the conference routinely signed the majority of top high school recruits in those years leading up and through the 7-year championship run.    The SEC also produces more first round draft picks than any other conference.   That trend has only been punctuated over and again in the 2020’s.  

While coaches have come and gone since this book was published and the sport has changed considerably just in the past decade, the book still contains sagacious insight regarding how the conference became so powerful and why it was likely destined to last (it has).   The book is a relatively fun, light 250 pages or so that provides the interested reader with much football program building history, coaching excellence and passion.    One does not have to be an SEC fan to enjoy this underrated manuscript only extra savory to those that are.   

 

·         You might like to read this book if you are a southeastern college football fan.

·         You might like to read this book if you are a college football fan. 

·         You might like to read this book if you are a football fan.  

Learn more about the author on Twitter:    https://twitter.com/RAYGLIER