In the south, they take their college football incredibly seriously. In fact, it probably wouldn’t be a stretch to say that, in the geographic area that comprises the NCAA’s Southeastern Conference, the fans there enjoy college football more than the NFL, which could be seen as blasphemy in northern parts of the United States. Whatever your feelings are about the SEC and college football, you cannot deny the conference’s dominance in relation to college football national championships. Since the inception of the BCS Championship Game in 1998, there have been 15 such national champions. Only six have come from schools that do not reside in the SEC. Furthermore, SEC schools have won seven straight titles, with three of them going to the Alabama Crimson Tide.

As far as the SEC pecking order of coaches goes, if there was a table that all the coaches sat, at the head would be Nick Saban, who is the head coach of those Crimson Tide championship teams. As you might have noticed, the coach’s last name is one letter away from sharing the name with Satan, and for some of the teams and coaches that have to go against the Alabama coach, who, aside from being a proven winner, is, perhaps, the best recruiter in the business, this little coincidence is anything but. Just ask Tim Davis, the offensive line coach for the University of Florida, another SEC school. During a meeting with boosters, Davis had this to say about his boss, Florida coach Will Muschamp, and what it’s like working for another intense SEC coach:

“I’ve always wanted to work with Will. Will’s got a plan. Will coached under the devil himself for seven years. I only did three. He did seven. And his DNA is not any different than Nick.”

Of course, it didn’t take long for such propaganda to hit the Internet, and from there, the “someone called Nick Saban the devil. Again.” cries could be heard from college football fans all over the world. Serving as an example for the popularity of such an utterance is the ESPN comment thread about these innocuous statements, which checks in at well over 5000 comments. While the content is really not that important–it’s just sports fans arguing among themselves–the fact that such a throwaway story garnered so much reaction serves as great indication of just how popular the following things are (not necessarily in the following order):

1. Nick Saban
2. College Football
3. The SEC
4. Sports fans arguing on the Internet

According to ESPN’s report, the coach in question apologized for the comments that were made, but even if he didn’t, Saban still gets the last laugh: