I was watching some quality low-level college hoops Monday, a game between Samford and Jacksonville that went to OT, when an ad for the Southern Conference came on. Most of it was normal.
The SoCon has an ad featuring a team that hasn’t been in the SoCon since 1968
The SoCon is very insistent on historical accuracy.
Clip of Steph Curry doing something great? Yeah, he went to Davidson, that checks out.
Beautiful picture of some college campuses? Yep:
Athletes working hard while not in an on-field or on-court athletic setting? Yeah, they showed them in the weight room AND the classroom!
Jerry West playing for the Lakers -- wait, Jerry West playing for the Lakers?
Zeke from Cabin Creek went to West Virginia, which is currently a member of the Big 12. And before that it was in the Big East. And before that it was a football independent with a hoops team in the A-10. It’s true that West Virginia was in the SoCon at one point, but it left in 1968, almost half a century ago. Before they headed out, though, Jerry West did win Southern Conference player of the year twice.
If you were truly hip to your conference realignment game, you would’ve realized this ad had a problem in it a bit earlier: Davidson isn’t even in the Southern Conference anymore -- they’re now in the A-10.
On the one hand, this is a refreshing step in the name of historical accuracy. Most of the time a team moves from one conference to another, the old conference goes all damnatio memoriae on them -- “YES, TEXAS HAS ALWAYS PLAYED TCU ON THANKSGIVING. I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF TEXAS A&M. IS THAT DII OR SOMETHING?!?!?!?!” -- and the new conference pretends all the cool stuff the old team did is part of its history, and somehow Tommie Frazier is leading Nebraska to victory on the Big Ten Network. It’s nice to see one say “hey, this stuff happened in our conference! That’s pretty cool!”
On the other hand, isn’t this, like, the exact opposite of whatever purpose an ad for a conference is supposed to serve? “Hey, look at these people who realized our conference wasn’t good enough and left us for bette- WAIT, WHERE ARE YOU GOING
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More in: Rodger’s college basketball notebook
