Tailgates, Traditions, and the Real Cost of the Southern College Experience
How Football and Parties Overshadow Academics in the South’s Higher Education Culture
It’s been nearly two decades since I set foot on a college campus. During my own college years, I was a commuter student at Rutgers University—a (weak) public Ivy that wasn’t exactly known for its sports culture. Football and drinking weren’t at the center of my experience. But this past weekend, I flew down to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to visit my nephew at the University of Alabama during parents’ weekend. I knew I was in for a dose of Southern collegiate life—drinking, football, and the social scene—but what I saw led me to an interesting conclusion: the South, or at least its college culture, isn’t serious. And while this observation may not be novel, my time at Alabama put it in stark relief.
As the weekend unfolded, it became clear that academics take a backseat to partying and sports. Fraternities and sororities dominated the social scene, but I saw little to no emphasis on intellectual engagement. Out of the dozens of young people I met, including my nephew’s roommates, only once did someone mention what they were studying. This young woman proudly showed off her portfolio as an interior design major. Beyond that, academic conversations were nonexistent. None of my nephew’s roommates opened a book or mentioned an exam or paper. As someone who spent my own college years balancing studies and broad intellectual interests, I was surprised by the sheer absence of academic focus.
This lack of seriousness reflects a broader cultural trend in Southern universities. These institutions, it seems, function more as mating markets than centers for learning. Many young women appear to be there less for academic enrichment and more for social positioning—earning an inexpensive degree in "something" while marketing their youth and beauty to find a partner with better prospects than what’s available back home. The result is that these schools operate more like social clubs than places of serious education.
Image: Basically, the girl I saw like clones of Agent Smith all weekend
On the male side, I saw a similar focus on appearance, but in a different way. Many young men seemed more invested in their physiques—perhaps with the aid of anabolic steroids—than in intellectual development. What struck me was how this focus on physical appearance and instant gratification filters up through the culture of the South, setting it apart from more academically rigorous regions.
The experience left me questioning whether the resources poured into higher education in places like Alabama are being wasted. Most young people don’t need an expensive university education. Instead of funneling average students into costly institutions, we should reconsider the purpose of higher education. I’m not advocating for an elitist approach to education, as some like Leo Strauss might. I believe that many young people would benefit from focused study—perhaps a couple of years of English, applied mathematics, and civics. This could be done more effectively and cheaply at community colleges, which don’t have the bloated costs of multimillion-dollar sports programs and administrative overhead.
Take the University of Alabama, for example. It’s listed in The Princeton Review’s top college book, but based on what I saw, serious academics were nowhere in sight. If this is what a "top" university looks like, what about the lower-ranked schools that saddle students with debt but fail to provide them with meaningful skills?
This stark contrast between the South and the more academically rigorous blue states reminded me of an older division in American history—the Civil War. Back then, the industrious WASPs and Germans of the North were advancing civilization while the Scotch-Irish, slaveholding aristocrats of the South clung to an outdated agrarian economy. Today, the North continues to lead in innovation and progress, while the South remains rooted in tradition and leisure pursuits like football and socializing. And, just like in the past, the more productive regions of the country end up subsidizing the more leisurely ones.
This dynamic is clearly visible in modern welfare distribution. Red and rural counties, like those in Alabama, receive a disproportionate amount of federal aid. While many Southern states champion the rhetoric of individual responsibility, they are also the largest recipients of government assistance. This redistribution of wealth from blue, productive states to red, less productive ones stands in stark contrast to traditional conservative values. Far from being paragons of self-reliance, many rural areas have become dependent on government subsidies to survive.
I don’t have a solution for this problem, and perhaps there isn’t an easy one. But my weekend at the University of Alabama left me thinking about the real costs of a culture focused on parties, sports, and appearances. While the South revels in tailgating and football games, the blue states are the ones driving economic progress and innovation. The divide between these regions isn’t just political—it’s cultural, and it’s not going away anytime soon.
This brings us back to a central question: how much football and Miller Lite can we consume to achieve greatness? As a believer in free markets, I understand that incentives drive behavior. But the incentives in places like Alabama seem skewed, pushing young men and women toward lifestyles of excess rather than achievement. For those of us in blue states, we’re paying for it—whether through higher taxes or the cost of subsidizing red states’ welfare.
As I left Alabama, I wondered: how sustainable is this divide? At what point will the blue states tire of footing the bill for a region content to indulge in leisure while others drive the future forward?