Rulers Of The Sec

During the years 1959–1966 Mississippi universities dominated the Southeastern Conference (SEC) in the big three sports—basketball, baseball, and football. Of the twenty-four championships that could be earned in those sports, University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) won six and Mississippi State University (MSU) won six. That is, the two Mississippi universities won twelve of the championships. That left the remaining twelve championships for the other members of the conference. Picking up in the late fifties, James Crockett explores the most decisive wins in each major sport, beginning at the source of these victories: the extraordinary coaches and their interesting personalities. With each year, Crockett charts the unreal rise within the SEC conference and the many hardships that faced these beloved teams as their students, faculty, and traditions changed all around them. Stars and coaches that shine in the book include John Vaught, Tom Swayze, Jake Gibbs, and Donnie Kessinger from Ole Miss; and Paul Gregory, Bailey Howell, Babe McCarthy, and the amazing SEC Champion Bulldog basketball team of 1962–1963. Rulers of the SEC: Ole Miss and Mississippi State, 1959–1966 enraptures readers with harrowing victories and multiyear, dynastic championships. It is a tale of great coaches, great athletes, and great teams as they adapted to a controversial era of college sports.

Arguably the best football conference in America, the Southeastern Conference (SEC) contains some of the most storied programs in the history of college football. In Where Football is King, Christopher Walsh provides a team-by-team history of the SEC and describes the classic games, players and coaches in the conference's seventy-three-year history. The genesis of the SEC really begins with the introduction of football to the University of Georgia in 1891 by a chemistry professor, Charles Herty. While Georgia's first game was against Mercer University that Fall, the South's oldest rivalry was born when Georgia took on Auburn on February 20, 1892 at Atlanta's Piedmont Park. From there, Walsh recounts, the sport took off like wildfire, and the SEC was able to formally organize some four decades later. Originally a thirteen-team conference, through attrition and addition the SEC eventually became comprised of Georgia, Auburn, Vanderbilt, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, LSU, Kentucky Tennessee, Mississippi State, South Carolina, and Auburn. From his unique vantage point as beat writer for Alabama football for the Tuscaloosa News, Walsh also gives insight into the culture and traditions of football in the South, where, it is said (and probably widely believed), the game is "greater than religion." Legendary figures and legendary games pass through the pages Where Football is King: players such as Joe Namath, Ken Stabler, Herschel Walker, Terrell Davis, and Payton Manning, and games such as the "Iron Bowl," the intense annual rivalry between Auburn and Alabama. As colorful as the SEC is competitive, this history will be essential reading for any fan of the game of football.