What if your college football team was a beer? If the history, pageantry, characteristics, quirks, and fanaticism of your alma mater could all be personified into a single beer, what would it be? Here, we take a look at the conference that has been the gold standard for success over the past twenty years or so – the SEC.
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| South Expects Championships |
Please note that we attempted to poke good-natured fun at all schools. This isn’t meant to be taken too seriously. If you find your blood pressure rising while reading this, drink each of the 14 beers listed below, and then read it again. Repeat as necessary.
Alabama – Budweiser. They’re the kings and they tell you about it. A lot. And then they remind you about it some more. They crowned themselves king even in years when no one else did. And the ones that scream the loudest about it have never set foot in the brewery.
Arkansas – PBR. They won a blue ribbon once about a million years ago, and they still like to tell you about it. Leaves a terrible aftertaste.
Auburn – Anchor Christmas. It’s a new formula every year. It may be blow-the-doors-off awesome one year and inexplicably terrible the next year. But you never know until you open the package, and there is a blind and renewed optimism every year.
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| Baton Rouge’s take on Pat O’Brien’s classic |
LSU – Hurricane High Gravity Malt Liquor (pairs very nicely with corndogs). Listen, we’re just here to get drunk and have a wild party that ends in as many arrests as possible.
Mississippi State– Heineken. You can’t put your finger on it, but you just don’t like it. There is no logical reason to dislike it, but you just really, really do. It’s like this annoying pest that keeps showing up at your party.
Ole Miss – Omnipollo Symzonia. Beautiful packaging … but that’s the most exciting thing about it. It’s good, it’s fine, it’s nice. But you talk more about how beautiful the bottle was than what the actual beer tasted like.
Texas A&M– Rogue Sriracha Stout. The first sip is spicy and exciting and has you hooked from the beginning. And then as you continue to enjoy it, the excitement wanes. It’s too difficult to drink and you ultimately have to walk away.
Florida – Goose Island Honker’s Ale. There’s so much going on here. It only recently started being a
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| Look for this in the Grove on Saturday. |
favorite, but it quickly became the envy of the world. And then it sold out to someone up north and got to be really annoying. Comes with a cut-off denim koozie.
Georgia – Sweetwater 420. It’s consistently good, and has been for a very long time. It’s something that you can have and enjoy, but it never completely wows you. It’s not great, even though everyone drinking it will tell you how great it is, and how the one in your hand is going to be just as good as the one you remember from 1982. And then they’ll bark at you.
Kentucky – Nashoba Winery Wattaquadoc Wheat. A winery making beer? Beer is really just a
diversion for them. Just a way to pass the time until it’s basketb … I mean wineseason again.
Missouri – Sierra Nevada Nooner. New to the party, surprisingly good, and yet you always forget about it until you see it in the store. You buy it, enjoy it, make a mental note to keep it on your short list … and then forget about it 10 minutes later.
South Carolina– Corona. Every year – every single year – this is going to be the year that it’s great. And then it’s not. This is the quintessential “just wait ‘til next year” beer.
Tennessee – Michelob Ultra. So monotonous it’s annoying. 100,000 people all drinking the same thing over and over and over again. It’s almost like 100,000 people singing the same song over and over and over again … for no apparent reason.
Vanderbilt– Strongbow Hard Apple Cider. You want to like it. You really want to like it. But it’s just not any good, because it’s a watered down version of the real thing. Every once in a while you get excited about it … but then it lets you down again. <Sigh>
So, what say you? What would have been on your list? And what conference should we ‘tackle’ next? Leave your comments below.
