College football creates a special kind of camaraderie, even between fans of varying teams. Fans love to sit around the tailgate and discuss every topic under the sun related to the game we all enjoy.

In the Tailgate Talk series, we discuss random college football topics ranging from hypothetical situations to actual events within the game. Read the opinions of SDS contributors and chime in yourself in the comments below.

Would you prefer your team win a single national championship in football or multiple national championships in another sport?

Brad Crawford (@BCrawfordSDS):

Ask any South Carolina fan about the program’s recent flurry of trips — and titles — to the College World Series in Omaha and many would tell you they would trade multiple rings for a national championship on the gridiron. It’s just the way it is in Columbia, S.C.

Before the College Football Playoff era, the quest for the glass football seemed obtainable thanks to Steve Spurrier’s success at a once mediocre and irrelevant program nationally. The buzz surrounding football was at its highest point in arguably school history during the Gamecocks’ recent stretch of three straight 11-2 seasons.

There’s something magical about beating nationally-ranked teams inside Williams-Brice Stadium that can’t be matched on the diamond or on the hardwood.

Ethan Levine (@ELevineSDS):

I would rather have two basketball championships than one football championship, but I understand this is counter-cultural to how the SEC works in the 21st century.

It’s almost funny how good the SEC is at virtually every men’s and women’s sport except men’s basketball, in which it boasts no legitimate title contenders outside of No. 1 Kentucky.

I’ll come right out and say it — I’m a proud Kentucky grad with a strong adoration for UK’s men’s basketball program and coach John Calipari. The culture at UK is basketball-centric. The fan base loves the football program and has shown it more support in recent years as Mark Stoops has given the fans more to support. But football will never top basketball in the Bluegrass, and not only would most UK fans rather have two basketball titles than one in football, they’d probably rather have one basketball title instead of two in football.

Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but the point is Kentucky loves its hoops and it wouldn’t trade a pair of national titles for anything in the sporting world.

In trying to assess this question from a more neutral point of view, I’d imagine most SEC fan bases would rather have one title on the gridiron than two on the hardwood. The SEC’s worst-kept secret is how much it values football over basketball, and the conference’s excellence on the football field and mediocrity on the basketball court further prove that point.

At the end of the day, championships are immortal and can be bragged about for decades after they occur. Winning a title in football will last forever. The same can be said in basketball, and bragging about two titles is certainly sweeter than bragging about one, but ultimately all of these titles are immortal achievements. Thus, fans would rather spend decades bragging about one football title than two titles in anything non-football.

So I suppose my answer is I’d rather have one ring in football than two in men’s hoops, with a clause that excludes Kentucky from that statement.

Kevin Duffey (KevinDuffey):

As a Florida fan, I don’t have to choose because we win titles in both football and basketball. I’m kidding.

The typical answer is indeed football, but I’m not sure it’s a slam dunk answer for me.

When you look back at a school’s success in athletics, the football championships certainly hold more weight and are likely more memorable, but one might argue that the experience as a fan during a championship run today in either football or basketball can be equal.

The regular season of college football is unbeatable. A team rattling off a 11-win or 12-win season then making it through conference championships and now two rounds of playoff games is an amazing run. But, a championship run through the tournament in March is quite amazing as well.

Whether it was watching Urban’s dominant teams win it all or Donovan’s back-to-back run, I remember enjoying each championship equally. Likely, I take the football championships for granted (even after a rough Muschamp era), and I’ll admit that if the team I love is lacking a football championship, it’s probably not even a question (unless you’re from Kentucky).

For the vast majority of fans, the answer is football because it simply matters more… but winning it all in basketball is a heck of a ride as well.

Brett Weisband (@WeisbandSDS): 

I’ll go ahead and get this out there: college football is the only college sport I’m remotely interested in. While I understand the appeal of college basketball, the product to me is nowhere near as enjoyable as my beloved NBA basketball.

I went to South Carolina, a school that rose from the morass to become a nationally relevant football program during my years there. After watching the team grow from a group with a seven-win ceiling to winning the SEC East and then setting a school record for wins in my final year on campus, I feel far more connected to the Gamecocks’ successes and failures than I have with any other team I root for.

It’s not like I come from a background where I grew up watching championship teams — at a young age, I decided to forsake my dad’s Pittsburgh Steelers to root for my hometown Philadelphia Eagles, missing out on two Super Bowls in my lifetime — but even having the Gamecocks win two baseball national championships didn’t excite me, even though I lived a beer pong shot away from the baseball stadium in Columbia.

To me, there’s not much that compares to rooting for your alma mater on the football field. You build your entire fall around home games and the away games you want to travel to. It becomes your entire life for four falls, and then the pull to go back once you graduate is just as strong, to feel connected to the school you spent the best years of your life at.

Maybe it’s because I didn’t grow up watching college basketball (or baseball for that matter), or maybe it’s because my alma mater isn’t exactly a basketball power, but the feeling of winning even multiple championships in one of those sports would be nothing like the joy I’d feel at seeing a CFP trophy at my alma mater.

Now, ask me to pick between the Eagles, or the 76ers I love so much and Gamecocks football? It’s a a tough choice, but I’d have to take the parade down Broad Street.

What say you?