This is an opinion column.

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If I’ve come to appreciate anything over the last few months, then it’s how much everyone around the country loathes the Deep South.

And by extension, the Southeastern Conference.

For whatever reason, I had been blind to all the misplaced rage. Maybe I didn’t want to see it. Maybe I was living in a bubble. Maybe I just had my head in the dirt … err, I mean, in the red clay.

I guess maybe you could say that I was once asleep, but now the springtime sun is shining and I have been awakened to the light of the truth.

Is that what it means when my favorite readers call me woke? Maybe so.

I know one thing for sure. It was the resentful football bitterness of the Big Ten that woke me up, and now we’re on the brink of March Madness and I can see that everyone has their knives out for the SEC once again. The folks up north really don’t want to hear about how the SEC might have the best college basketball conference in history.

Southern domination of football is one thing, but basketball, too?

The Southern hoops takeover is upon us. Madison Square Garden might be the Mecca, and Tobacco Road has the history, but this week those places got nothing on Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena. The SEC basketball tournament begins at Bridgestone on Wednesday, and it will feature 14 teams vying for at-large bids for the NCAA Tournament, including four teams all good enough to be No.1 seeds.

The SEC is so unfathomably deep, it’s easier to list the teams that have no chance at an at-large bid to the Big Dance than the ones that do. LSU and South Carolina need to win the SEC tournament to punch unlikely Cinderella tickets. Everyone else — even Texas and Oklahoma with conference records of 6-12 — still has hope.

Now, do I think the SEC will land 14 teams on Selection Sunday? A dozen is the most likely number, but even then that would be an unprecedented achievement for a single conference.

The Big East holds the all-time record for bids at 11, set in 2011. That mark will most likely fall to the SEC on Selection Sunday.

Good luck to the selection committee with their brackets. By rule, teams from the same conference cannot meet in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

But, first, the not-so-friendly family reunion.

The greatest college basketball tournament in the history of the South is here. The first round of the SEC tournament is set for Wednesday, and then the teams that earned single byes enter the fray on Thursday. Friday’s Big 4 double-bye teams are Auburn, Florida, Alabama and Tennessee, and all of them have the potential of putting together a run to win not only the SEC tournament but the national championship, too.

But other teams in the SEC are capable of making a run and cutting down the Sunday nylon.

Texas A&M is a trendy pick and Arkansas is my dark-horse candidate to shock the South and win it all. Former Kentucky coach John Calipari, now with the Hogs, has a squad talented enough to burn down the barn.

Perhaps most of all, it says something about the depth of the SEC that perennial superpower Kentucky is the tournament’s No.6 seed.

It was a down year for Big Blue, which lost twice to Alabama and once to Auburn, but Kentucky begins the SEC tournament on Thursday with a 3-0 combined record this season against Florida and Tennessee and non-conference wins against No.1-ranked Duke and former No.1 Kansas.

Don’t count out Kentucky just yet.

Auburn is the standard and everyone knows Alabama can win it all, but who’s the hottest team in the field? My nod goes to the Gators, which swept Alabama and Auburn on the road.

Auburn was my preseason favorite to win the national championship, but that doesn’t mean the Tigers are my pick to win the league tournament. This week can get weird in a hurry, and especially if Chad Baker-Mazara goes full Chad Baker-Mazara.

I go back to a question I asked Auburn coach Bruce Pearl before the season even started.

Question: You’re one of the great college basketball coaches of all time. Now, that also means that you’ve been around a while. With NIL and some of the other factors involved, what’s it like to be in this league where Kentucky is picked eighth in the SEC?

“Well, I appreciate that,” Pearl said. “I don’t pay that much attention to that. I do think it speaks to the depth and breadth and the quality of our league, and I told the guys after a difficult practice the other day, I said, ‘You guys want the good news? Auburn basketball could be one of the top 30 programs in the country this year. We could also finish 10th in this league, especially if we keep practicing like that.’

“So, therefore, what are you going to do? You’ve got to bring it every night. You’ve got to beat everybody on the schedule that you’re supposed to beat, and you’ve still got to pick a couple off that you’re not. I would imagine that Alabama is pretty good. I know they’re picked No.1, and they’re awfully good. They deserve to be picked No.1, I believe.

“But I think the league is probably going to beat each other up pretty good. So, handling losses, getting to the next play, getting to the next game is going to be really, really important. The league has never been stronger.”

Pearl was being modest. Top 30 team? He had to know that his team had the potential to be the best in the country.

Alabama was the preseason pick to win the league, and the Tide might have done it had it remained healthy throughout the season. The loss of perimeter defender Latrell Wrightsell in November was a setback, but Alabama goes into the SEC tournament coming off its biggest win of the season, a 93-91 instant overtime classic against rival Auburn.

After the victory, Alabama coach Nate Oats called this season’s team better than the 2024 group that made it to the Final Four. I like the Tide’s chances to get hot once again.

It’s time to celebrate a historic season of basketball. The SEC has been more entertaining than the NBA. The South’s many haters will call the league overrated. We know the truth, though. The Southern hoops takeover is only just beginning.

Just wait until Duke and North Carolina start begging to join the party.

BE HEARD

Got a question for Joe? Want to get something off your chest? Send Joe an email about what’s on your mind. Let your voice be heard. Ask him anything.

Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of the book “We Want Bama: A Season of Hope and the Making of Nick Saban’s Ultimate Team.”