More so than any other sport, the old adage of “any given (Satur)day” holds true in college football.

I think even more so in the SEC. The rivalries in the SEC are unmatched. Yes, the Big Ten has their weird jug and bucket games, but in the SEC we play big-boy football. Real, slobberknocking, mollywhopping football.

Likewise, this isn’t the Pac-12 or 14 or whatever they are called now. In the SEC, we actually field defenses and try to hit and tackle the guy with the ball. No, the naysayers can yap all they want about other conferences, but the SEC is clearly, again, the dominate conference of college football.

I thought about that and asked myself why. Why is the SEC still the best? We play real, nasty football in the SEC. Plain and simple. But why?

I think it all goes back to the rivalries. The deep-seated hatred that teams have for each other. Just look at the rivalries: Alabama-Auburn, Alabama-Tennessee, LSU-Alabama, Auburn-Georgia, Ole Miss-Mississippi State, Kentucky-Tennessee, Florida-South Carolina and Florida-Georgia, to name a few. Even the new guys to the SEC, Texas A&M, have a built in rivalry with Arkansas and LSU. Missouri is now entrenched into the SEC life and has developed some legit rivalries (Georgia and South Carolina come to mind at first thought).

That’s what makes the SEC great. Each and every Saturday teams are playing for their seasons and the future of their coaches, not some stupid jug or bucket. They are playing for supremacy over that arch-rival, for pride and for championships.

Believe me, I lived it. There’s just a different feel in the air when you play a Florida or an Alabama. The tension is higher, the crowd is bigger, the locker room is amped.

I wish I could express the amped feeling. Writing it doesn’t do it justice at all.  No matter where you are ranked. No matter where you are in the standings. No matter if you are playing No. 1 Alabama or an unranked Kentucky, anything can happen on any given Saturday. Trust me on that last one.

Damn that game still haunts me.