Don't Make Me Open Up a 50-Gallon Drum of Grizzard on You: A Reply to Maize 'n' Brew Dave

My favorite Michigan Wolverines blogger is, without a doubt, Maize ‘n’ Brew Dave. Granted, this is because other Michigan Wolverines bloggers either regrettably stopped writing or regularly call me a moron, but, still, being No. 1 is being No. 1, even if it’s only by default.

Accordingly, I read with amusement Dave’s satirical guide to irritating SEC fans. (I wish to stress that Dave was being satirical. Don’t take it personally. He’s just being funny. I can only hope to be half as humorous in replying to some, though by no means all, of his points.)

Dave kicked off this salvo between dueling conferences with a chorus of "Dueling Banjos":

Deliverance takes place in the South for a reason.

Yeah, it’s because you beer-swilling, bratwurst-slurping Midwesterners are too fat, misshapen, and ugly for even homicidal hillbillies to want to get busy with you. If Ned Beatty had been one of the Superfans, he’d have been the thin one.

Dave then identifies SEC fans by caste, including a category ("The Educated, Old Southern Family SEC Fan") to which I distinctly belong:

They are well dressed. Possess etiquette beyond normal tailgating. Educated to a fault, sometimes with multiple degrees from the same SEC school. Oh. And they know football. They will not roll into the SEC RAWKS GO WOO! type of discussion. They will point out, with clarity, the strengths and weaknesses of their team and yours in concise fashion, and do it in a slightly condescending tone of voice. As they are proper people, they're hard to rattle. However, they are insanely proud people. Kind of like Klingons, but without the blood pie and knifings.

I don’t mean to brag, but I have to think Dave had me in mind when he wrote that. Well, except for the "concise" part, I guess. Oh, all right, Dave had NCT in mind when he wrote that. Don’t be so sure about the knifings, though, Dave. We don’t all carry pocket knives just for the handy bottle openers, you know. Say what you will about "Deliverance," but nobody ever found the bodies, did they? Well, OK, then.

Dave identifies a number of ways in which to mock and goad Southerners, but he leads off with perhaps the biggest stick with which Big Ten aficionados like to whack those of us from SEC country:

SEC fans don't like the perception, especially among Yankees, that their educational institutions aren't up to par with other conferences' universities. They loathe it.

This is a fair point. Unfortunately for Dave, his erudite highbrow litany of takedowns includes the following snippets:

The Educated, New South SEC Fan - Family's been in the south a generation or two, but not that long. Parents or grandparents were/are snowbirds that finally said, "four feet of snow in buffalo v. misquotes" and made the logical choice

Talk to them slowly and loudly. Example: Chris Rock Tucker (dammit - ed.) talking to Jackie Chan in Rush Hour.

Now, I know Michiganders are all high and mighty about how enlightened they are and how backwards we are and how they’re so much more civilized where matters of race are concerned (well, except for when they’re delivering a 24-point electoral victory to George Wallace over George McGovern), but, if I may be so bold, I’d like to point out that this guy . . .

. . . is totally different from this guy:

Also, as long as we’re explaining to our northern brethren how people can be distinguishable from one another even if they happen to have the same ethnic background, neither of the guys depicted above is the same as this guy:

That’s a University of Georgia alumnus we like to call our athletic director. He got the job by being the best qualified candidate for the position. It didn’t hurt that he was one of us. While folks up north are busy being obsessed about how obsessed they imagine we are with race, we in Bulldog Nation are busy being a lot more concerned with whether your blood runs red and black than whether your skin tone’s white or black.

As for Dave’s other point, I don’t quite know what to make of the difference between "four feet of snow in buffalo v. misquotes." First of all, I don’t even know how you’d get that much snow into a bison, but, even if you could, I doubt whether it would affect your life enough to make you want to move somewhere else, particularly if you knew you were going to being misquoted when you got there.

I reckon ol’ Dave might’ve meant "Buffalo" (the city in New York) instead of "buffalo," and he might’ve meant "mosquitoes" (the most annoying insects in Georgia other than the ones that play at historic Grant Field) instead of "misquotes," but, gosh, I sure would’ve thought all them fancy Yankee universities might’ve taken a minute or two of class time to teach spelling and capitalization . . . or maybe those boys up north ain’t quite as smart as they like to think.

Anyhow, Dave’s piece was written in good clean fun, which was how I took it. Now, if y’all don’t mind, I’m going to go grab myself a Chick-fil-A sandwich, look at all the pretty Southern belles in their summer dresses, and think about how my alma mater’s football team ain’t lost to a Big Ten team in more than fifty years. Y’all keep up the fine work in them government-run factories churning out those environmentally-unsound gas-guzzlers in Detroit, hear?

Oh, and, speaking of Detroit . . . if the Lions win a game next year, you’re welcome.

Go ‘Dawgs!