I couldn't handle what? People questioning the SEC chant? I'm a Kentucky fan for crying out loud. We've never won enough football games to even have an opportunity to use that chant. Haha. I probably find it as entertaining as you. Certainly doesn't bother me any. I think it's hilarious people get so caught up talking about it really, because I assume at this point it is mostly SEC fans intentionally being trolls, and it seems most people want to keep feeding them.
But, because you specifically asked I was trying to explain to you a possible cause for SEC fans to support each other, in general, which has been the case for me from the time I was a boy. Dad would cheer for Tennessee or Georgia or South Carolina when they weren't playing Kentucky. Any common bond can bind people. That's normal. Even places with lots of things to be proud of do it. New York does it with pizza (they get really worked up and defensive and it isn't even their pizza), Italy with wine (even if their local winery is awful they defend "Italian wine" as a whole), the pacific northwest with weed (even an Albertan will brag about BC bud).
I mentioned the south being derided not because "woe is me" but because it's a simple reality. The south has a poor reputation -- some of it deserved, some not. Still, it's true. Florida should be cut off, Texas should secede, racism, slavery, inbred, hillbillies, rednecks, Jesusland, food stamps, etc. You know the drill. And in the south that net is cast fairly wide. Most of the negative stereotypes aren't confined to a specific state, but rather the broadly painted "south". Jersey is disgusting and Detroit is crime-ridden and Washington is full of potheads, but you rarely hear "the west" used as a negative. "The south" all gets lumped together for the most part and the term itself is often used as a negative. If all the negatives get lumped on tithe south as a whole, people want to share in the positives as well.
When a group of people feel like their area isn't looked upon favorably by a majority of the country, of course they are going to latch on to something they feel brings pride to their area. The less you feel you have to be proud of, the more you're going to try to support the few things you have. In the case of the south, honestly, I think one of the few things most feel they have to show off is success in sports and that probably feeds in to SEC fans supporting each other. They just want to support any success that brings positive publicity to the geographic region they think of as "home". Aside from being one of the few things to be proud of, sports are also just a freakishly big deal across most of the south (in a lot of these places not much else happens). Most of my grandpa's stories, other than the few he told me about the war, involved memories of listening to Cawood Ledford call Kentucky games on the radio. Watching basketball is one of the few things my father and I have in common or do together. For most of the south that's football for them. Some of this, I'm aware, is an indictment of the culture across much of the south.
I also think most SEC fans question why other conferences aren't more supportive of each other. You play these teams 2-3 times a year. If they go and shit the bed it makes everyone in the conference, and every win in the conference, look worse. If they win it just looks better for everyone involved. If I'm going to cheer for someone it might as be the one whose win would make my team look better.
Hope that helps, and go SEC.
